PDawN
6 reviews liked by PDawN
deranged psychopath game where you get to bear witness to the apex of media obsessed brainrot and enter a world where slavery turns out to be cool and pretty women should become items in your inventory. a BIZARRE compilation of ANY AND ALL the trite or gross tropes you've ever heard having to do with 'accepted anime storytelling'... It's pretty wild a time.
the kind of 'SOCIETAL CASE STUDY'-esque experience I get out of running through these unapologetic love and madness fueled psycho projects now and again is sorta WHY I play video games. rex being a gigachad carried some too, but that goes without saying
the kind of 'SOCIETAL CASE STUDY'-esque experience I get out of running through these unapologetic love and madness fueled psycho projects now and again is sorta WHY I play video games. rex being a gigachad carried some too, but that goes without saying
Sonic Superstars
2023
I've been a fan of the Sonic The Hedgehog series for years, arguably since I could first hold a controller. Been there since the 2D entries, the transition to 3D, watching Sonic X Saturday mornings on Fox, you name it I was probably there. Hell, even with it's faults and obvious warts, I still had a good time with Frontiers.
But I can't sugarcoat it, Sonic Superstars is a disappointment. I didn't expect something on the same exact quality as those Classic Genesis games, or Mania even. I went into it wanting to at least like it and have a decent game to play and come back to every now and then. What I got is a game that's serviceable for it's first half, and takes a nosedive in quality so bad in it's second half that it makes the level design in some of Dimps' Sonic titles seem fair and reasonable by comparison.
The gameplay is just what you'd expect from a 2D Sonic, you have 4 playable characters from the start each with their own unique abilities (Tails can fly, Knuckles can glide/climb walls, Amy can use her hammer and has a double jump etc.). That's mostly fine and dandy, if you've played a 2D Sonic, you know what you're in for. The momentum is something though. Sometimes it's fairly close to the original Classic games and you're hitting speeds very similar. Other times, you're going really fast (say, through a tube for example) and the game forces you back down to a base speed instead of letting you keep said momentum. The easiest way to explain it is to imagine Classic Sonic's gameplay in Sonic Forces, but tweaked to not be as egregiously bad as that game handled. I don't mean that in a good way.
Level Design goes from being pretty standard and occasionally interesting, to some of the worst levels I've ever experienced in a Classic Sonic title. When you get a level that's not bad you're usually having a fairly good time, maybe there was a gimmick or two that didn't land but you leave it feeling satisfied to an extent. When a bad level hits, the only thing on your mind is "I hope this ends soon" the farther you get into it. The final Zone of the game is genuinely the absolute worst about this. Without going into spoilers, it feels like Arzest just called in the developers for the Advance games to come in and design a Zone, and then they tweaked it after the fact to add even more unfun gimmicks to it.
Speaking of "unfun", the boss fights. Classic Sonic bosses, with some exceptions, all work the same in some fashion. The boss is always vulnerable, but there is usually an attack pattern to follow despite that. Superstars decided that it would be a perfect idea to make it to where you have to wait for the boss to expose their weak point before you can even get one hit in. Early on it's not that much of a problem, you can still mostly hit the bosses without waiting for their weak points to come out. It's when you get further into the game and each boss gets progressively longer and more obvious about this that it gets very frustrating.
Chaos Emeralds are naturally back. The Special Stages for them are the easiest in Sonic history, only one of them (Emerald 5) gave me any level of a challenge. They're fine for what they are honestly. Each Emerald gives you an Emerald Power that you can use, one per Zone. I'll be honest though, I only really used two of them in my entire playthrough. Avatar as it's basically a screen nuke that speeds up certain boss fights, and Bullet due to it being useful for getting to higher ground. The rest are either very useless or situational. The Bonus Stages, which you access by jumping into a portal over a checkpoint if you pass it with a certain number of rings, are just three Sonic 1 Special Stages taped to each other. I avoided these whenever I could, as I didn't really have much fun with them.
I don't think this game is outright awful, there's still some good to come of it. As stated prior, the first half of the game is mostly a decent time. The graphics and character animations are very good. One thing I hope Sega keeps for future games is that you can now fast fall when Tails is in a flying state which is so genuinely useful. While the music is mostly not worth writing home about, there's still some tracks that are good (Pinball Carnival Act 1 was exceptionally great). There's some things to like about this game, the last half genuinely being the way it is ultimately keeps me from recommending this however, especially at it's price point of $60. If you're wanting to give it a go, wait on a very big sale.
But I can't sugarcoat it, Sonic Superstars is a disappointment. I didn't expect something on the same exact quality as those Classic Genesis games, or Mania even. I went into it wanting to at least like it and have a decent game to play and come back to every now and then. What I got is a game that's serviceable for it's first half, and takes a nosedive in quality so bad in it's second half that it makes the level design in some of Dimps' Sonic titles seem fair and reasonable by comparison.
The gameplay is just what you'd expect from a 2D Sonic, you have 4 playable characters from the start each with their own unique abilities (Tails can fly, Knuckles can glide/climb walls, Amy can use her hammer and has a double jump etc.). That's mostly fine and dandy, if you've played a 2D Sonic, you know what you're in for. The momentum is something though. Sometimes it's fairly close to the original Classic games and you're hitting speeds very similar. Other times, you're going really fast (say, through a tube for example) and the game forces you back down to a base speed instead of letting you keep said momentum. The easiest way to explain it is to imagine Classic Sonic's gameplay in Sonic Forces, but tweaked to not be as egregiously bad as that game handled. I don't mean that in a good way.
Level Design goes from being pretty standard and occasionally interesting, to some of the worst levels I've ever experienced in a Classic Sonic title. When you get a level that's not bad you're usually having a fairly good time, maybe there was a gimmick or two that didn't land but you leave it feeling satisfied to an extent. When a bad level hits, the only thing on your mind is "I hope this ends soon" the farther you get into it. The final Zone of the game is genuinely the absolute worst about this. Without going into spoilers, it feels like Arzest just called in the developers for the Advance games to come in and design a Zone, and then they tweaked it after the fact to add even more unfun gimmicks to it.
Speaking of "unfun", the boss fights. Classic Sonic bosses, with some exceptions, all work the same in some fashion. The boss is always vulnerable, but there is usually an attack pattern to follow despite that. Superstars decided that it would be a perfect idea to make it to where you have to wait for the boss to expose their weak point before you can even get one hit in. Early on it's not that much of a problem, you can still mostly hit the bosses without waiting for their weak points to come out. It's when you get further into the game and each boss gets progressively longer and more obvious about this that it gets very frustrating.
Chaos Emeralds are naturally back. The Special Stages for them are the easiest in Sonic history, only one of them (Emerald 5) gave me any level of a challenge. They're fine for what they are honestly. Each Emerald gives you an Emerald Power that you can use, one per Zone. I'll be honest though, I only really used two of them in my entire playthrough. Avatar as it's basically a screen nuke that speeds up certain boss fights, and Bullet due to it being useful for getting to higher ground. The rest are either very useless or situational. The Bonus Stages, which you access by jumping into a portal over a checkpoint if you pass it with a certain number of rings, are just three Sonic 1 Special Stages taped to each other. I avoided these whenever I could, as I didn't really have much fun with them.
I don't think this game is outright awful, there's still some good to come of it. As stated prior, the first half of the game is mostly a decent time. The graphics and character animations are very good. One thing I hope Sega keeps for future games is that you can now fast fall when Tails is in a flying state which is so genuinely useful. While the music is mostly not worth writing home about, there's still some tracks that are good (Pinball Carnival Act 1 was exceptionally great). There's some things to like about this game, the last half genuinely being the way it is ultimately keeps me from recommending this however, especially at it's price point of $60. If you're wanting to give it a go, wait on a very big sale.
Sonic Superstars
2023
This review contains spoilers
This will be a bit ranty and long because this is my first time writing a longer review, and it's a series that while it may be laughed at and disregarded something I'm passionate about and hold dear, so I'd appreciate it if you'd bear with me.
During this fateful weekend through opportunities that came through a mixture of being jobless, lucky, and bored I was able to play both Sonic Superstars and Super Mario Wonder days ahead of their release. Seeing as both games are platformers and historically being compared to one another, they stuck around in my head. As such, I've come to the following conclusion about the two: Super Mario Bros. Wonder is a game that does something I think has been uncommon as a majority of recent Nintendo releases revel in their decades-long popularity and thus grow complacent. It tries new things. New, fresh ideas. They aren't all groundbreaking and entirely different from Mario's already absurdist and surrealist roots, but they spitball things at you at a fairly decent pace. The game is like a conversation between players and developers, showing you new ideas and chucking different ways to think about Mario as a game. There are the new power-ups that aren't just a new suit to wear or an item to forget about and throw. There are shorter, challenge-based levels that don't test your platforming skill, but throw in light puzzle solving combined with the quick thinking the genre itself is known for. Some new enemies play with ideas that at the very least weren't explored as much in previous games. And while it isn't entirely all-new, what returns comes back in loving rendition, with the respect newcomers onto a decades-old icon are due to give. Funnily enough, as the entry that breaks free from the New branding his previous 2D outings were known for, it's a title that feels proud to brand itself as a Super Mario Bros. game.
On the other hand, Sonic Superstars is a game that does what at least 3 other games in the series have tried before it. It tries to recapture the magic of that original Genesis trilogy (plus Sonic CD) while also adding its new twist to the formula. Four-player co-op and new Colors-esque Emerald abilities set out to shake up the 2D Sonic hierarchy. But, like Sonic 4 and unlike Mania, it fails to see the forest for the trees and instead comes out the other end a shallow mishmash of previous games.
My misgivings with Sonic Superstars come down to two big factors: The game's lack of confidence in design, and the few new ideas it DOES have turning around to its detriment and feeding back into its lack of confident level design. To start with the levels: when I say that the levels aren't confident, it ties back into the game's reliance on its history. Act 1 of Zone 2 is a good example of this: The level is, primarily, a fusion of Mushroom Hill's vine running and mini-vine bungees (The frog badniks even serve the same purpose as those weird rope obstacles!) and Stardust Speedway's interconnecting tunnel system. And while that's a fun homage for that part of the act, the fun fades when it not only ends after looping that mechanic 3ish times into a boss battle, but that Act 2 just adds in a cruddy limited visibility segment on top of those two. That's the issue with these game's zones: Every zone is just something an older zone has done before with WAY better precision and finesse. It oftentimes avoids level concepts of its own making and falls back on things that are safe and familiar, for reasons that I believe are due to being scared of failure. And to be fair, I get that. I can't even imagine being Azrest, fresh off the heels of Yuji Naka's arrest and Balan Wonderworld's universal panning. Suddenly, you're back in the hot seat again as you're developing for a franchise that, while it used to be more middling, is back in its biggest resurgence in a long time. And you've gotta develop a game that's a follow-up to Sonic's first green Metacritic rating in YEARS. If I were anybody within the director's chair or producer's seat, yeah I'd try not to do anything nuts too. But this ends up making the game's sense of identity, a concept core with Sonic, bland and risk-averse. That's not what I love the series for, and it sucks to see it trip up like this even if it's for justifiable reasons. We know why [Insert your alcoholic relative here!] drinks, but that doesn't mean I have to smile when I see them trip and spill the booze on my carpet.
With that out of the way, we'll move on to one of the few new ideas they have: Multiplayer Co-Op and the emerald powers. There's not much to say about multiplayer in Sonic: To be blunt, it’s not good. I think it as a feature falls apart when you play with someone who picks up the game a little faster than you, or vice versa. Then it just becomes you or them dragging everyone on a wild ride, as whoever gets ahead first grabs control with the camera, and the players left in the dust are thrust to get ejected and pop back into existence sometimes multiple times during a segment. I played with two other good friends of mine, one who was semi-experienced with Sonic and the other who had no real interest in the series but played it with me because the co-op had him intrigued, and the experience was marred by either me or the semi-experienced lurching ahead and wrestling control between each other. This isn't even mentioning the extra parts of the game, like SINGLE PLAYER EXCLUSIVE LEVELS that lock you into a character and force other players out. Why these are in a game that advertises 4-player co-op is mind-boggling to me, as all I can see is a group of kids getting ready to enjoy the new Sonic the Hedgehog game and then waiting because, oh wait Josh has to do this Sonic only level. Wait, this level is huge! Why can't we play on this one? It's a strange decision that only compounds itself when you also take the special stages into account. To the game's credit, these are brand new special stages, quite unlike anything we've seen before (although I'd argue they play similarly to Sonic's mobile outings, however it's unlikely they had an impact on the game.) However, to be blunt, they're not very good. At best, realizing most of them go in a circle makes the solutions pretty cut and dry. At worst, you're chasing them through a grappling hook with zero satisfying movement and an incredibly dodgy reticle. And it's even worse in co-op, where control is snatched from you every two turns so that everyone can put in the work to get the emerald, only it ends up feeling disorienting and leading to confusion more than anything else. Once you do beat these levels, you get access to a power associated with the emerald you obtained. The problem with THESE now is that they're grossly overpowered abilities that let you turn levels on their head, and while I'm usually down for such stuff like that as a postgame you can get such abilities as early as the very first level, the emerald from that zone giving you a red hot omnidirectional airdash that has no limit but the timer associated with it which is already quite generous. This one alone causes so many problems with being able to invalidate whole sections of levels, becoming relevant all the way until the final boss where you only can't use it because it more or less has a giant hitbox next to its face the majority of the time. The issues tie back to the game's unconfident design: Giving your character the ability to just skip segments of the level if he so desired from the start of a playthrough shows lack of confidence within your own design, and makes me question why I'm spending time on this game instead of another. Why would I spend time with the game where I don't have to do bad parts if I don't want to when I could be playing games that don't have those bad parts to begin with? A similar argument can be made with another Sonic game I've gone on record being fond of, Sonic CD. In that game, to get the best ending possible you need to go to the past and destroy the robot generator within every zone. Doing so turns that zone's future into its Good Future counterpart. However, this is technically an optional objective to get that good ending, as if you don't want to scour the levels for these generators (which at times can be troubling to find) you could always just simply collect the 7 time stones, which automatically destroys all generators, therefore, giving you good futures in every zone and giving you the good ending. However, I'd argue that this isn't an avoidance of a mechanic but more an alternative way to playing the game, as collecting the stones does offer a different perspective to the game, You instead have to focus on different objectives. Rather than focus on getting to the past and exploring the level, you've got to get your hands on 50 rings and make sure not to lose them by the end. Then you have to complete special levels, which many may describe as particularly frustrating. It offers a different, more familiar challenge while still not sacrificing the game's identity. You still have to look for something throughout levels, only now you're looking for rings. This also gives the future and past variants more utility than seen before: if you can't locate any more rings in the present variation, maybe you'll have luck in the breezier past. Or maybe the monitor-rich but mechanically tougher future will suit your needs. It breathes new life into the game in a way that is to the game’s benefit. Superstars' emerald mechanic does no such thing. You can use them to obtain secret paths (some of which are only available on a second play with later emerald abilities), but they yield no secrets other than maybe some medals for your Battle Mode robot. Getting the emeralds doesn't get you a special ending, so there's no reason to get them unless you want Super Sonic really badly, and even then you won't be able to use him until the final zone in the game either way. The only difference you can make in your run is to not get them, which then lets you deal with the game's level design in full, and that has its stated problems already. And that's their big issue: They offer no fun changes to the game and only weaken the game's already struggling levels.
There's so much I could go into paragraphs and paragraphs talking about, like nitpicks to how because of an over-correction on Knuckle's glide (Funnily enough this started in Mania) for the past two games he's been the worst feeling character to play in the games and how crushing that is for someone who's been a BIG fan of the character since my start with the series. Or talk about how much the bosses go from boring to bad to Oh My God Is That The Death Egg Robot For The Fifth Fucking Time Now GO AWAY. OR talk about how halfway through the game it feels like Dimps took the reigns and we start getting pits of death and devious jumps that uncurl you straight into a wall of enemies (If I didn't switch off of Sonic to Amy around Zone 3 I might have taken a star off of this review). There's so much to unpack about this game that makes me feel sad, mad, and everywhere in between, but I'd be here for days and nights on this damn thing.
So to start kicking off the last bit, I want to start by sharing a thought I had the earlier on the day I was writing this review. I was watching a live performance of Ready To Fly by Masayoshi Takanaka, played by himself and the iconic Carlos Santana. Throughout the performance, there were several call-and-response segments that enamored me so much I couldn't go the whole day without thinking about them. It's stereotypical to say, but it felt like a conversation so real I could picture it. It was incredibly playful, yet polite, and showboat-y in a way all unique to them. Comparing music to video games is kind of rocky as it is, but what I'm trying to say by bringing these up is that crafting an experience for a player requires that conversation, instead of a call and response it's more like a create and response. That back and forth between developer and player is what I think is vital to unique experiences you don't get in other mediums. I think Mario Wonder devs understood this and used it to their best ability to create a game that, in terms of levels, we'll be thinking about a while afterwards. I don't think the Sonic Superstars devs DON'T know this: Azrest is full of industry veterans. I think it's bad faith to just go "They repackaged the old thing and made it new again! They're lazy!" Because I don't know them. But here's my hunch: I think they do know how to make that experience, it's just that years and years of getting shut down and beaten up have led them to have so many reservations, and this game for better and for worse represents that. And maybe that's also wrong and they just fucked up. Maybe we'll never know. But whatever the case, I hope that'll be the kind of game I replay on a whim a couple of years down and discover I was wrong about it.
P.S. I'll probably do a replay once the day 1 patch is out, and I'll make an update if any relevant new thoughts come about.
P.P.S. Forgot to mention what I liked about the game so I'll bust through ‘em quickly: Art style is nice except for Sand Sanctuary where it looks genuinely unfinished. The new character, Trip, is a cutie, but her super form is too over-designed to take seriously and I wish they went crazier with her proportions instead of giving her Vector's ball animations in order to differentiate her. The physics of the game are great, but mostly because they're spot on to mania, which is ALSO because, as far as we know, Christian Whitehead was involved in making sure that was the case, so I'm not too inclined to give them points for that. Music was actually fine for the most part, although it could overall be better even Senoue's rank fake Genesis synth was okay this time around. Tee Lopes crushed as per usual except for one of his songs which I don't remember the name of right now.
During this fateful weekend through opportunities that came through a mixture of being jobless, lucky, and bored I was able to play both Sonic Superstars and Super Mario Wonder days ahead of their release. Seeing as both games are platformers and historically being compared to one another, they stuck around in my head. As such, I've come to the following conclusion about the two: Super Mario Bros. Wonder is a game that does something I think has been uncommon as a majority of recent Nintendo releases revel in their decades-long popularity and thus grow complacent. It tries new things. New, fresh ideas. They aren't all groundbreaking and entirely different from Mario's already absurdist and surrealist roots, but they spitball things at you at a fairly decent pace. The game is like a conversation between players and developers, showing you new ideas and chucking different ways to think about Mario as a game. There are the new power-ups that aren't just a new suit to wear or an item to forget about and throw. There are shorter, challenge-based levels that don't test your platforming skill, but throw in light puzzle solving combined with the quick thinking the genre itself is known for. Some new enemies play with ideas that at the very least weren't explored as much in previous games. And while it isn't entirely all-new, what returns comes back in loving rendition, with the respect newcomers onto a decades-old icon are due to give. Funnily enough, as the entry that breaks free from the New branding his previous 2D outings were known for, it's a title that feels proud to brand itself as a Super Mario Bros. game.
On the other hand, Sonic Superstars is a game that does what at least 3 other games in the series have tried before it. It tries to recapture the magic of that original Genesis trilogy (plus Sonic CD) while also adding its new twist to the formula. Four-player co-op and new Colors-esque Emerald abilities set out to shake up the 2D Sonic hierarchy. But, like Sonic 4 and unlike Mania, it fails to see the forest for the trees and instead comes out the other end a shallow mishmash of previous games.
My misgivings with Sonic Superstars come down to two big factors: The game's lack of confidence in design, and the few new ideas it DOES have turning around to its detriment and feeding back into its lack of confident level design. To start with the levels: when I say that the levels aren't confident, it ties back into the game's reliance on its history. Act 1 of Zone 2 is a good example of this: The level is, primarily, a fusion of Mushroom Hill's vine running and mini-vine bungees (The frog badniks even serve the same purpose as those weird rope obstacles!) and Stardust Speedway's interconnecting tunnel system. And while that's a fun homage for that part of the act, the fun fades when it not only ends after looping that mechanic 3ish times into a boss battle, but that Act 2 just adds in a cruddy limited visibility segment on top of those two. That's the issue with these game's zones: Every zone is just something an older zone has done before with WAY better precision and finesse. It oftentimes avoids level concepts of its own making and falls back on things that are safe and familiar, for reasons that I believe are due to being scared of failure. And to be fair, I get that. I can't even imagine being Azrest, fresh off the heels of Yuji Naka's arrest and Balan Wonderworld's universal panning. Suddenly, you're back in the hot seat again as you're developing for a franchise that, while it used to be more middling, is back in its biggest resurgence in a long time. And you've gotta develop a game that's a follow-up to Sonic's first green Metacritic rating in YEARS. If I were anybody within the director's chair or producer's seat, yeah I'd try not to do anything nuts too. But this ends up making the game's sense of identity, a concept core with Sonic, bland and risk-averse. That's not what I love the series for, and it sucks to see it trip up like this even if it's for justifiable reasons. We know why [Insert your alcoholic relative here!] drinks, but that doesn't mean I have to smile when I see them trip and spill the booze on my carpet.
With that out of the way, we'll move on to one of the few new ideas they have: Multiplayer Co-Op and the emerald powers. There's not much to say about multiplayer in Sonic: To be blunt, it’s not good. I think it as a feature falls apart when you play with someone who picks up the game a little faster than you, or vice versa. Then it just becomes you or them dragging everyone on a wild ride, as whoever gets ahead first grabs control with the camera, and the players left in the dust are thrust to get ejected and pop back into existence sometimes multiple times during a segment. I played with two other good friends of mine, one who was semi-experienced with Sonic and the other who had no real interest in the series but played it with me because the co-op had him intrigued, and the experience was marred by either me or the semi-experienced lurching ahead and wrestling control between each other. This isn't even mentioning the extra parts of the game, like SINGLE PLAYER EXCLUSIVE LEVELS that lock you into a character and force other players out. Why these are in a game that advertises 4-player co-op is mind-boggling to me, as all I can see is a group of kids getting ready to enjoy the new Sonic the Hedgehog game and then waiting because, oh wait Josh has to do this Sonic only level. Wait, this level is huge! Why can't we play on this one? It's a strange decision that only compounds itself when you also take the special stages into account. To the game's credit, these are brand new special stages, quite unlike anything we've seen before (although I'd argue they play similarly to Sonic's mobile outings, however it's unlikely they had an impact on the game.) However, to be blunt, they're not very good. At best, realizing most of them go in a circle makes the solutions pretty cut and dry. At worst, you're chasing them through a grappling hook with zero satisfying movement and an incredibly dodgy reticle. And it's even worse in co-op, where control is snatched from you every two turns so that everyone can put in the work to get the emerald, only it ends up feeling disorienting and leading to confusion more than anything else. Once you do beat these levels, you get access to a power associated with the emerald you obtained. The problem with THESE now is that they're grossly overpowered abilities that let you turn levels on their head, and while I'm usually down for such stuff like that as a postgame you can get such abilities as early as the very first level, the emerald from that zone giving you a red hot omnidirectional airdash that has no limit but the timer associated with it which is already quite generous. This one alone causes so many problems with being able to invalidate whole sections of levels, becoming relevant all the way until the final boss where you only can't use it because it more or less has a giant hitbox next to its face the majority of the time. The issues tie back to the game's unconfident design: Giving your character the ability to just skip segments of the level if he so desired from the start of a playthrough shows lack of confidence within your own design, and makes me question why I'm spending time on this game instead of another. Why would I spend time with the game where I don't have to do bad parts if I don't want to when I could be playing games that don't have those bad parts to begin with? A similar argument can be made with another Sonic game I've gone on record being fond of, Sonic CD. In that game, to get the best ending possible you need to go to the past and destroy the robot generator within every zone. Doing so turns that zone's future into its Good Future counterpart. However, this is technically an optional objective to get that good ending, as if you don't want to scour the levels for these generators (which at times can be troubling to find) you could always just simply collect the 7 time stones, which automatically destroys all generators, therefore, giving you good futures in every zone and giving you the good ending. However, I'd argue that this isn't an avoidance of a mechanic but more an alternative way to playing the game, as collecting the stones does offer a different perspective to the game, You instead have to focus on different objectives. Rather than focus on getting to the past and exploring the level, you've got to get your hands on 50 rings and make sure not to lose them by the end. Then you have to complete special levels, which many may describe as particularly frustrating. It offers a different, more familiar challenge while still not sacrificing the game's identity. You still have to look for something throughout levels, only now you're looking for rings. This also gives the future and past variants more utility than seen before: if you can't locate any more rings in the present variation, maybe you'll have luck in the breezier past. Or maybe the monitor-rich but mechanically tougher future will suit your needs. It breathes new life into the game in a way that is to the game’s benefit. Superstars' emerald mechanic does no such thing. You can use them to obtain secret paths (some of which are only available on a second play with later emerald abilities), but they yield no secrets other than maybe some medals for your Battle Mode robot. Getting the emeralds doesn't get you a special ending, so there's no reason to get them unless you want Super Sonic really badly, and even then you won't be able to use him until the final zone in the game either way. The only difference you can make in your run is to not get them, which then lets you deal with the game's level design in full, and that has its stated problems already. And that's their big issue: They offer no fun changes to the game and only weaken the game's already struggling levels.
There's so much I could go into paragraphs and paragraphs talking about, like nitpicks to how because of an over-correction on Knuckle's glide (Funnily enough this started in Mania) for the past two games he's been the worst feeling character to play in the games and how crushing that is for someone who's been a BIG fan of the character since my start with the series. Or talk about how much the bosses go from boring to bad to Oh My God Is That The Death Egg Robot For The Fifth Fucking Time Now GO AWAY. OR talk about how halfway through the game it feels like Dimps took the reigns and we start getting pits of death and devious jumps that uncurl you straight into a wall of enemies (If I didn't switch off of Sonic to Amy around Zone 3 I might have taken a star off of this review). There's so much to unpack about this game that makes me feel sad, mad, and everywhere in between, but I'd be here for days and nights on this damn thing.
So to start kicking off the last bit, I want to start by sharing a thought I had the earlier on the day I was writing this review. I was watching a live performance of Ready To Fly by Masayoshi Takanaka, played by himself and the iconic Carlos Santana. Throughout the performance, there were several call-and-response segments that enamored me so much I couldn't go the whole day without thinking about them. It's stereotypical to say, but it felt like a conversation so real I could picture it. It was incredibly playful, yet polite, and showboat-y in a way all unique to them. Comparing music to video games is kind of rocky as it is, but what I'm trying to say by bringing these up is that crafting an experience for a player requires that conversation, instead of a call and response it's more like a create and response. That back and forth between developer and player is what I think is vital to unique experiences you don't get in other mediums. I think Mario Wonder devs understood this and used it to their best ability to create a game that, in terms of levels, we'll be thinking about a while afterwards. I don't think the Sonic Superstars devs DON'T know this: Azrest is full of industry veterans. I think it's bad faith to just go "They repackaged the old thing and made it new again! They're lazy!" Because I don't know them. But here's my hunch: I think they do know how to make that experience, it's just that years and years of getting shut down and beaten up have led them to have so many reservations, and this game for better and for worse represents that. And maybe that's also wrong and they just fucked up. Maybe we'll never know. But whatever the case, I hope that'll be the kind of game I replay on a whim a couple of years down and discover I was wrong about it.
P.S. I'll probably do a replay once the day 1 patch is out, and I'll make an update if any relevant new thoughts come about.
P.P.S. Forgot to mention what I liked about the game so I'll bust through ‘em quickly: Art style is nice except for Sand Sanctuary where it looks genuinely unfinished. The new character, Trip, is a cutie, but her super form is too over-designed to take seriously and I wish they went crazier with her proportions instead of giving her Vector's ball animations in order to differentiate her. The physics of the game are great, but mostly because they're spot on to mania, which is ALSO because, as far as we know, Christian Whitehead was involved in making sure that was the case, so I'm not too inclined to give them points for that. Music was actually fine for the most part, although it could overall be better even Senoue's rank fake Genesis synth was okay this time around. Tee Lopes crushed as per usual except for one of his songs which I don't remember the name of right now.
Sonic Superstars
2023
"New Sonic Mania U Deluxe"
Oh boy.. here we go. Look, I am not gonna start this review with the usual game journalist bullshit of bringing up Sonic's history. You already know it and am tired of hearing people reiterate it. What I would like to bring up, though, are the weird responses the Sonic Community has had over reviews criticizing a game they haven't played yet. When I saw those scores I was disappointed, sure, but I was not ready to invalidate the opinion of someone who has played a game when I haven't. I won't 100% stick by it but I will keep it open in my mind.
I say this now because after playing Sonic Superstars, I completely 100% understand the criticisms this game offers. This game is, on the whole, aight. It's a pretty standard 2D Sonic Game with some good controls, mostly fun level design, a cute set of cutscenes threading the game together, and some moments where I was just having fun speeding through like any other 2D Sonic game.
But more than Mania, 3K, or even Sonic 2, this game has a fair bit holding it back from being "solid" as opposed to just "okay." The first big thing is the game's presentation, the game looks pretty rough. Characters look neat but some of the levels you run through look blocky and dour and not all that appealing. The game ran well, but there were bugs aplenty like collision and sound issues, multiple crashes, and a section where the game booted me back to the start of a ZONE when I died to a boss. That was really annoying. And finally, and this is the one you've all been waiting for, the music is a MASSIVE mixed bag. Most of it is just.. okay. Forgettable generic sonic music but nothing too bad. Then you randomly either get to an act with a Tee Lopes song that sounds amazing, or a boss or level with some of the worst music in any Sonic Game. The boss theme is so fucking bad you guys oh my god.
In terms of gameplay issues, apart from a level or two where the level itself was insufferable, the main issue I have with the game on its own is that all of the bosses are... awful. Like genuinely awful even by 2D Sonic standards. There are a couple in particular that I 100% see people quitting the game over. Collision is janky, they usually take ages before allowing you to hit them, and telegraphing is either nonexistent or poorly shown. It's so bad.
And the last major problem I have with the game is that the two main aspects of the game they used to advertise it don't enhance the game at all, and, at points, make it worse. First are the Emerald Powers. Most of them aren't that helpful as the stages are not designed around them at all because they're completely optional, so they just feel like something you get and then promptly forget about as you continue to 2D Sonic like normal. The one time where I went out of my way to use it was when I wanted to cheese an aerial boss and randomly generated platforms couldn't give me the arc to jump that I needed.
And the 4 player co-op is legitimately frustrating and it reaffirms why this sort of idea just can't work. If a player gets caught on the edge of the screen they have to respawn, but when everyone is running through the level at probably different speeds it makes the levels that already weren't built for co-op even more chaotic and frustrating.
Overall, I can't say this is a bad game or even near the worst 2D Sonic game I've played, but for something that should have been a slam dunk for the Sonic team, this was a huge disappointment. It's fun and I definitely don't mind that it exists or that people enjoy it, but I'm not sure what this game could do for people that Mania, 2 or 3K can't do better. Sorry........
Oh boy.. here we go. Look, I am not gonna start this review with the usual game journalist bullshit of bringing up Sonic's history. You already know it and am tired of hearing people reiterate it. What I would like to bring up, though, are the weird responses the Sonic Community has had over reviews criticizing a game they haven't played yet. When I saw those scores I was disappointed, sure, but I was not ready to invalidate the opinion of someone who has played a game when I haven't. I won't 100% stick by it but I will keep it open in my mind.
I say this now because after playing Sonic Superstars, I completely 100% understand the criticisms this game offers. This game is, on the whole, aight. It's a pretty standard 2D Sonic Game with some good controls, mostly fun level design, a cute set of cutscenes threading the game together, and some moments where I was just having fun speeding through like any other 2D Sonic game.
But more than Mania, 3K, or even Sonic 2, this game has a fair bit holding it back from being "solid" as opposed to just "okay." The first big thing is the game's presentation, the game looks pretty rough. Characters look neat but some of the levels you run through look blocky and dour and not all that appealing. The game ran well, but there were bugs aplenty like collision and sound issues, multiple crashes, and a section where the game booted me back to the start of a ZONE when I died to a boss. That was really annoying. And finally, and this is the one you've all been waiting for, the music is a MASSIVE mixed bag. Most of it is just.. okay. Forgettable generic sonic music but nothing too bad. Then you randomly either get to an act with a Tee Lopes song that sounds amazing, or a boss or level with some of the worst music in any Sonic Game. The boss theme is so fucking bad you guys oh my god.
In terms of gameplay issues, apart from a level or two where the level itself was insufferable, the main issue I have with the game on its own is that all of the bosses are... awful. Like genuinely awful even by 2D Sonic standards. There are a couple in particular that I 100% see people quitting the game over. Collision is janky, they usually take ages before allowing you to hit them, and telegraphing is either nonexistent or poorly shown. It's so bad.
And the last major problem I have with the game is that the two main aspects of the game they used to advertise it don't enhance the game at all, and, at points, make it worse. First are the Emerald Powers. Most of them aren't that helpful as the stages are not designed around them at all because they're completely optional, so they just feel like something you get and then promptly forget about as you continue to 2D Sonic like normal. The one time where I went out of my way to use it was when I wanted to cheese an aerial boss and randomly generated platforms couldn't give me the arc to jump that I needed.
And the 4 player co-op is legitimately frustrating and it reaffirms why this sort of idea just can't work. If a player gets caught on the edge of the screen they have to respawn, but when everyone is running through the level at probably different speeds it makes the levels that already weren't built for co-op even more chaotic and frustrating.
Overall, I can't say this is a bad game or even near the worst 2D Sonic game I've played, but for something that should have been a slam dunk for the Sonic team, this was a huge disappointment. It's fun and I definitely don't mind that it exists or that people enjoy it, but I'm not sure what this game could do for people that Mania, 2 or 3K can't do better. Sorry........
Sonic Superstars
2023
We have sonic mania at home
Sonic Superstars
2023
this game is kind of a clusterfuck, and not in the fun, artsy way i'd hoped it'd be when they announced that Naoto Ohshima, the director of CD, probably better known for designing the character and his studio would be working on this game, but because almost every aspect of it feels so sloppily thrown together... deeply upsets me to see a classic sonic, no - a sonic game so ridiculously stricken of anything even resembling style and art direction, from the sight - a cacophony of extremely tired level themes, genuine google images results for searching "industrial" or "desert", trying its best to fit itself into the confines of a game that, fidelity wise, looks like it could have been sold on the ps3 store for $10, to the sound - an abhorrent mix of sfx ripped from different games, and a soundtrack that is so incohesive to the point where it feels like it was made by a dozen different people (because it was, lol.).
and the level design ... what do i even say? they did a passable job, but evidently, sonic team nor arzest don't have the chops for this, hard to dish out any genuine praise when these levels are so indistinguishable from each other, like they found a formula that they thought was "good enough" and applied it to every single zone ... the result is something that's mildly enjoyable, if not brought down severely by a plethora of awful, just awful boss fights and poorly integrated gimmicks that tend to vary severely in quality, but of course this leads to a pretty tasteless experience throughout. the only real attempt to push classic sonic forward here is with the emerald powers, which are sadly useless for the most part - only found use from the screen nuke and fireball, the rest were either too situational or obsoleted by the fireball... if there's one thing i can really hammer in, it's that, despite being the most advertised feature in this game, playing this game with four or probably even three players is truly miserable - to boot classic sonic gameplay is fundamentally not built for this , but the way they constantly switch from speed sections where everyone else puts the controller down to extremely slowed down gimmick / platforming setpieces so that everyone can reasonably exist in the same space had our heads throbbing by the end, doesn't help that you aren't given time to recover from being offscreen like say, a nsmb game, because that wouldn't be frustrating enough, no - instead you despawn virtually the instant you're offscreen, down to the millisecond i'm willing to bet.
did have a lot of fun tag teaming the special stages with my friends. couldn't tell you how disappointed we were that going super counted as an emerald power - meaning only one of us could use it at a time, and we'd lose it when we go offscreen, and that unlocking the true final boss required playing through the game again with a specific character with no co-op support. oh well
and the level design ... what do i even say? they did a passable job, but evidently, sonic team nor arzest don't have the chops for this, hard to dish out any genuine praise when these levels are so indistinguishable from each other, like they found a formula that they thought was "good enough" and applied it to every single zone ... the result is something that's mildly enjoyable, if not brought down severely by a plethora of awful, just awful boss fights and poorly integrated gimmicks that tend to vary severely in quality, but of course this leads to a pretty tasteless experience throughout. the only real attempt to push classic sonic forward here is with the emerald powers, which are sadly useless for the most part - only found use from the screen nuke and fireball, the rest were either too situational or obsoleted by the fireball... if there's one thing i can really hammer in, it's that, despite being the most advertised feature in this game, playing this game with four or probably even three players is truly miserable - to boot classic sonic gameplay is fundamentally not built for this , but the way they constantly switch from speed sections where everyone else puts the controller down to extremely slowed down gimmick / platforming setpieces so that everyone can reasonably exist in the same space had our heads throbbing by the end, doesn't help that you aren't given time to recover from being offscreen like say, a nsmb game, because that wouldn't be frustrating enough, no - instead you despawn virtually the instant you're offscreen, down to the millisecond i'm willing to bet.
did have a lot of fun tag teaming the special stages with my friends. couldn't tell you how disappointed we were that going super counted as an emerald power - meaning only one of us could use it at a time, and we'd lose it when we go offscreen, and that unlocking the true final boss required playing through the game again with a specific character with no co-op support. oh well