It's bad.
The physics are nearly spot on. Unless you're some Sonic autist like me, you probably wouldn't even know it was any different from the classics. It's pretty much the one and only thing they really nailed in this game. Although most of that is due to it being carried over from the retro engine, which does include some jank (Insert clip of being crushed by a corner from the penultimate level here), but as I said, it is basically perfect in terms of what we would expect from Classic physics and controls.
The character's abilities are as you would expect, but Amy just sucks total ass. Wow, a double jump, how original! And she also has some scuffed version of a drop dash that basically does... nothing? It sucks. And the extra character, their ability is... a double jump? Again!? Brilliant. They just seem to be incapable of actually designing new characters for a classic setting. Both new movesets made are just generic, uninspired tripe that bring nothing new to the table, giving little incentive to play them above the pre-existing roster.
The emerald powers are fine. They are handed to you automatically in the "We designed this bit specifically for the power" moments, which is kind of dumb, and those moments always stick out like a sore thumb regardless of the pointer. The abilities are basically divided into 2 types: Traversal and Keys. The keys are just press the button to make the door open. For example, the time ability, which only exists to let you go through doors disguised as fast-moving objects. And Traversal, which just allows you to skip parts of the level or go to a designated area. They aren't really fun to use; they are convenient, allowing you to cheese platforming and get free hits on a boss. I mean, the first emerald power is literally just "Press the button for free damage on the boss." Like, sure, that's helpful, but it isn't really "fun," is it?
To even get those powers, however, you need to beat the special stages, and wow! They are a steaming pile of shit! The reticle on the Sonic Boom-esque tether is so infuriating to use. It grabs onto things from seemingly random angles and distances. And even then, it's not like these stages actually pose a challenge; they are mind-numbingly easy. If you can tolerate the annoyance of missing your grabs constantly for about 20 seconds, they all but play themselves.
The level design is lackluster; it ranges from OK to annoying. It never gets downright atrocious, but it's just generic and incredibly repetitive. They love reusing the same boring sections on loop, especially if it includes a slow, annoying gimmick. And all the level gimmicks are a snooze. For example, the rotating sections in the final level are easy, slow, and sleep-inducing, as are the anti-gravity sections in the exact same level! They exist to ground you to a halt.
But even when the levels are OK, I still don't want to play them because I know at the end is lurking a god-awful, sluggish boss. I must congratulate this game for having by far the worst bosses in the entire franchise. Every single one is simply "Wait through this painfully long attack phase, then get one free hit in, repeat." This would be bad enough in any game, but a SONIC game? At the end of EVERY level? It's painful. Usually, the boss fights drag on longer than the entire level, for crying out loud. You may only progress through the boss when it very specifically decides, so even with emerald powers, they still drag on for an eternity. When you hit a boss, it flashes white, indicating its invincibility frames, like the classics, but even after this flashing ends, you STILL can't actually hit the boss again until it miraculously decides you can again, even if you very clearly get hits off on them. Every encounter is basically like watching a very long and boring QTE that is identical every single time. The final boss is so long and boring, and the issue is not "Oh, you just think it's hard, git gud!" No, it's that it's BORING; you sit through minutes upon minutes of slog in the first phase, then finally get to the second, make one tiny slip up and boom, you're right back to sitting doing nothing for minutes again. It's atrocious. And I was thinking the final boss would be the worst example of this, but actually, no! There are 2 more secret final bosses which are somehow EVEN WORSE! Bravo!
The graphics are as generic and soulless as can be. All the badniks look like bootleg McDonald's toys, and the stages lack any real flair or distinct theming. When this game was announced, they declared no zones would be reused! All original! So instead of reused cool zones, we instead get a grab bag of insanely generic-looking levels. The animations for most characters are decent enough, although some are quite drab in contrast, specifically the unlockable character.
The music is the definition of mediocrity. It has a few select tracks that are decent, but for every one of those, we have a complete stinker. How they even managed to do this with such a talented group of composers is beyond me! It's definitely their worst work for probably every single one of them.
And one of the worst parts of this entire package is the sound design, and I'm not usually privy to this due to my lack of knowledge on the subject, but here, dear God. Firstly, this game has NO identity; almost all jingles and sounds are stolen from Mania/Gens/Colours. And those that aren't are stock sounds played 10x louder than they should be. It's terrible!
The story makes basically no sense and is a waste of time. Nothing happens. And the newly introduced/reintroduced characters Fang and Trip do basically nothing. A huge shame considering both of these characters have really cool designs and personalities. I mean you take Fang, bring him back, have him do nothing, then give him arguably the worst boss in the series' history (twice). Fantastic.
There is also, of course, the Battle Mode, which is terrible! For one, it doesn't even work half the time. Usually, the servers are down, and when they are up, they insist on matching you with only ONE person and a bunch of CPUs. And even when you play with friends, you get 0 options, so hope you like playing random shitty game modes on loop on random maps rather than just letting you choose. It also has some arduous ranking system that has about 100 noob tier ranks that nobody is ever going to bother grinding up anyway since they don't even display anywhere! What is the point?! This mode is presumably where the endless grind element is meant to come in, as during your playthrough you'll obtain Medals to buy robot parts, and these medals make up the main reward for doing anything in the game, which is dumb considering 99% of players aren't going to give a shit about these collectibles. And to make matters worse, even if you do care about them, all the things you can buy with them (cosmetics for your battle mode robot) are ludicrously overpriced to incentivize grinding/playing on loop. This system, I can only presume, is made this way to justify the $60 price tag since many people, and individuals in the industry, view the length of a game as equal to its value. So this game is very clearly geared toward long play sessions. It is most certainly not made to be picked up and beaten like the previous titles. This also explains the pointless hub world, insanely drawn-out boss fights, and mandatory forced replays of the game alongside this grindfest of a medal system. Not that this game is even worth $60 regardless of ignoring the length mindset, but that mindset is what leads to games such as this purposely going out of their way to waste your time since, well, you paid a high price so you expect a long game, right? There is a difference between a game that is endlessly replayable being worth a lot and a game that simply doesn't respect my time or patience as it tries to eke out another hour of playtime to justify a price tag.
A huge disappointment, even if you can cope and find enjoyment from the pure mediocrity that is this game's aesthetics and level design, the bosses take away any remaining joy that could have been had. Unfortunately, a big miss. 4/10
The physics are nearly spot on. Unless you're some Sonic autist like me, you probably wouldn't even know it was any different from the classics. It's pretty much the one and only thing they really nailed in this game. Although most of that is due to it being carried over from the retro engine, which does include some jank (Insert clip of being crushed by a corner from the penultimate level here), but as I said, it is basically perfect in terms of what we would expect from Classic physics and controls.
The character's abilities are as you would expect, but Amy just sucks total ass. Wow, a double jump, how original! And she also has some scuffed version of a drop dash that basically does... nothing? It sucks. And the extra character, their ability is... a double jump? Again!? Brilliant. They just seem to be incapable of actually designing new characters for a classic setting. Both new movesets made are just generic, uninspired tripe that bring nothing new to the table, giving little incentive to play them above the pre-existing roster.
The emerald powers are fine. They are handed to you automatically in the "We designed this bit specifically for the power" moments, which is kind of dumb, and those moments always stick out like a sore thumb regardless of the pointer. The abilities are basically divided into 2 types: Traversal and Keys. The keys are just press the button to make the door open. For example, the time ability, which only exists to let you go through doors disguised as fast-moving objects. And Traversal, which just allows you to skip parts of the level or go to a designated area. They aren't really fun to use; they are convenient, allowing you to cheese platforming and get free hits on a boss. I mean, the first emerald power is literally just "Press the button for free damage on the boss." Like, sure, that's helpful, but it isn't really "fun," is it?
To even get those powers, however, you need to beat the special stages, and wow! They are a steaming pile of shit! The reticle on the Sonic Boom-esque tether is so infuriating to use. It grabs onto things from seemingly random angles and distances. And even then, it's not like these stages actually pose a challenge; they are mind-numbingly easy. If you can tolerate the annoyance of missing your grabs constantly for about 20 seconds, they all but play themselves.
The level design is lackluster; it ranges from OK to annoying. It never gets downright atrocious, but it's just generic and incredibly repetitive. They love reusing the same boring sections on loop, especially if it includes a slow, annoying gimmick. And all the level gimmicks are a snooze. For example, the rotating sections in the final level are easy, slow, and sleep-inducing, as are the anti-gravity sections in the exact same level! They exist to ground you to a halt.
But even when the levels are OK, I still don't want to play them because I know at the end is lurking a god-awful, sluggish boss. I must congratulate this game for having by far the worst bosses in the entire franchise. Every single one is simply "Wait through this painfully long attack phase, then get one free hit in, repeat." This would be bad enough in any game, but a SONIC game? At the end of EVERY level? It's painful. Usually, the boss fights drag on longer than the entire level, for crying out loud. You may only progress through the boss when it very specifically decides, so even with emerald powers, they still drag on for an eternity. When you hit a boss, it flashes white, indicating its invincibility frames, like the classics, but even after this flashing ends, you STILL can't actually hit the boss again until it miraculously decides you can again, even if you very clearly get hits off on them. Every encounter is basically like watching a very long and boring QTE that is identical every single time. The final boss is so long and boring, and the issue is not "Oh, you just think it's hard, git gud!" No, it's that it's BORING; you sit through minutes upon minutes of slog in the first phase, then finally get to the second, make one tiny slip up and boom, you're right back to sitting doing nothing for minutes again. It's atrocious. And I was thinking the final boss would be the worst example of this, but actually, no! There are 2 more secret final bosses which are somehow EVEN WORSE! Bravo!
The graphics are as generic and soulless as can be. All the badniks look like bootleg McDonald's toys, and the stages lack any real flair or distinct theming. When this game was announced, they declared no zones would be reused! All original! So instead of reused cool zones, we instead get a grab bag of insanely generic-looking levels. The animations for most characters are decent enough, although some are quite drab in contrast, specifically the unlockable character.
The music is the definition of mediocrity. It has a few select tracks that are decent, but for every one of those, we have a complete stinker. How they even managed to do this with such a talented group of composers is beyond me! It's definitely their worst work for probably every single one of them.
And one of the worst parts of this entire package is the sound design, and I'm not usually privy to this due to my lack of knowledge on the subject, but here, dear God. Firstly, this game has NO identity; almost all jingles and sounds are stolen from Mania/Gens/Colours. And those that aren't are stock sounds played 10x louder than they should be. It's terrible!
The story makes basically no sense and is a waste of time. Nothing happens. And the newly introduced/reintroduced characters Fang and Trip do basically nothing. A huge shame considering both of these characters have really cool designs and personalities. I mean you take Fang, bring him back, have him do nothing, then give him arguably the worst boss in the series' history (twice). Fantastic.
There is also, of course, the Battle Mode, which is terrible! For one, it doesn't even work half the time. Usually, the servers are down, and when they are up, they insist on matching you with only ONE person and a bunch of CPUs. And even when you play with friends, you get 0 options, so hope you like playing random shitty game modes on loop on random maps rather than just letting you choose. It also has some arduous ranking system that has about 100 noob tier ranks that nobody is ever going to bother grinding up anyway since they don't even display anywhere! What is the point?! This mode is presumably where the endless grind element is meant to come in, as during your playthrough you'll obtain Medals to buy robot parts, and these medals make up the main reward for doing anything in the game, which is dumb considering 99% of players aren't going to give a shit about these collectibles. And to make matters worse, even if you do care about them, all the things you can buy with them (cosmetics for your battle mode robot) are ludicrously overpriced to incentivize grinding/playing on loop. This system, I can only presume, is made this way to justify the $60 price tag since many people, and individuals in the industry, view the length of a game as equal to its value. So this game is very clearly geared toward long play sessions. It is most certainly not made to be picked up and beaten like the previous titles. This also explains the pointless hub world, insanely drawn-out boss fights, and mandatory forced replays of the game alongside this grindfest of a medal system. Not that this game is even worth $60 regardless of ignoring the length mindset, but that mindset is what leads to games such as this purposely going out of their way to waste your time since, well, you paid a high price so you expect a long game, right? There is a difference between a game that is endlessly replayable being worth a lot and a game that simply doesn't respect my time or patience as it tries to eke out another hour of playtime to justify a price tag.
A huge disappointment, even if you can cope and find enjoyment from the pure mediocrity that is this game's aesthetics and level design, the bosses take away any remaining joy that could have been had. Unfortunately, a big miss. 4/10
3 Comments
1. They're not outdated, I only praised the physics.
2. They are copy pasted from the retro engine, they are practically identical to the originals but there is some teeny tiny differences that are irrelevant to 99% of players.
2. They are copy pasted from the retro engine, they are practically identical to the originals but there is some teeny tiny differences that are irrelevant to 99% of players.
This comment was deleted
Apparently the physics are actually not even copy pasted from the retro engine as they are even less accurate to the originals than that engines physics. So yeah, there is substantial differences between them, and those minute differences do effect my play experience, specifically the air movement is quite off, specifically bouncing off of enemies, but they are "close enough" and I felt like giving it a free win in SOMETHING.
Fernabo
7 months ago