I wanted to enjoy this game so badly, I really, truly did. It meant the world to me that I would do so, especially after the surreal and thrilling experience that was Sonic Adventure DX.
The stage was set. Two stories featuring some of my favourite characters in all of fiction, music that I enjoy enough to get up out of my seat and dance to, well-aged visuals, a plot designed to marvel and stun, and substance coming out of the game's figurative ears.
I should've taken the game's launcher being broken for roughly a whole year as a sign to stay away.
This game confused me. I don't mean in the sense that I couldn't understand it, but rather that I couldn't believe I had gone from Sonic Adventure DX, one of my top five (six?) Sonic games of all time, to this. I found myself questioning every little thing that I saw in this game. Why did the Mech gameplay, which was essentially E-102 Gamma's gameplay copied and pasted, suddenly get reduced to a snail's pace, with gameplay that makes me more miserable than thinking about how much I got bullied in school? Why do the controls, which, as far as I'm aware, are barely tweaked versions of SADX's, feel so unbelievably, constantly janky? Why are half of the sound effects things that make me feel like tinnitus is an allergic reaction?
I don't know what it was about this game that [did the polar opposite of clicking with me] so hard, possibly the fact that it's one of the rare times in my life where I actually allowed myself to have high expectations for something, but this game managed to disappoint me at every turn - so much so that it took me nearly a year just to finish it, as opposed to a month for SADX (I got stuck a lot), and my memory was so tainted that I honestly thought it took me two years to complete.
Despite everything, I still love the majority of what this game has to offer. Its music, its visuals, even its story hardly disappoint, but the gameplay is just mortifying. Well, the gameplay and the last part of the story. Seriously, why was the Dark Story so weirdly paced? Why did Shadow have only four levels? Why was his redemption arc so last-second and rushed? Am I supposed to care about his relationship with Rouge? Because pretty much every future product with those two made me care, yet this, somehow, failed to. Otherwise though, I've very little to say against the story, I still think it deserves praise aplenty.
Honestly, it'd be incredibly easy to reduce my feelings towards this game to a "Skill Issue", and that wouldn't be entirely wrong. I did struggle a lot with this game, I am not good at it, and I've no fear in admitting that. The problem is that I suck at most video games, I struggled almost if not just as much as I did here with SADX, and I struggled like hell with Sonic Heroes, too, yet I enjoyed both of those games a lot more.
There's a factor that goes into the enjoyment of games that I don't think most people tend to take into consideration, or really think that much about in general.
Incentive to replay.
No, I don't mean replayability. How fun a game is to replay is a completely different topic. What I'm talking about here is how much the game incentivises you to replay it - or, more accurately - to improve at it. Every single time I've brought up my struggles with this game, I'm met with people telling me that I need to keep playing to get better at it and enjoy it more, but that applies to just about every game ever made - at least the ones where what you do actually matters. Of course I'm going to enjoy a game more when I'm good enough at it to not have my flow broken every few seconds, but again, I wasn't any good at SADX or Heroes either, and I would jump at the opportunity to replay those, over this. This game doesn't make me feel like I want to get better at it. I have zero desire to actually have more fun with this game. I know I could get better at it, I know I could enjoy it more, and probably repair my shattered perspective of it, but I truly, from the bottom of my heart, don't want to. This game frustrates me deeply, and I don't believe that putting myself through such a miserable experience over and over and over again has enough of a reward at the end of the tunnel to justify it. I genuinely don't believe this game is worth that, and that upsets me a lot, because I would kill to be one of the people who take one look at this game and are just filled with pure joy.
But I'm not.
I had more fun playing Sonic Lost World. Sorry.
The stage was set. Two stories featuring some of my favourite characters in all of fiction, music that I enjoy enough to get up out of my seat and dance to, well-aged visuals, a plot designed to marvel and stun, and substance coming out of the game's figurative ears.
I should've taken the game's launcher being broken for roughly a whole year as a sign to stay away.
This game confused me. I don't mean in the sense that I couldn't understand it, but rather that I couldn't believe I had gone from Sonic Adventure DX, one of my top five (six?) Sonic games of all time, to this. I found myself questioning every little thing that I saw in this game. Why did the Mech gameplay, which was essentially E-102 Gamma's gameplay copied and pasted, suddenly get reduced to a snail's pace, with gameplay that makes me more miserable than thinking about how much I got bullied in school? Why do the controls, which, as far as I'm aware, are barely tweaked versions of SADX's, feel so unbelievably, constantly janky? Why are half of the sound effects things that make me feel like tinnitus is an allergic reaction?
I don't know what it was about this game that [did the polar opposite of clicking with me] so hard, possibly the fact that it's one of the rare times in my life where I actually allowed myself to have high expectations for something, but this game managed to disappoint me at every turn - so much so that it took me nearly a year just to finish it, as opposed to a month for SADX (I got stuck a lot), and my memory was so tainted that I honestly thought it took me two years to complete.
Despite everything, I still love the majority of what this game has to offer. Its music, its visuals, even its story hardly disappoint, but the gameplay is just mortifying. Well, the gameplay and the last part of the story. Seriously, why was the Dark Story so weirdly paced? Why did Shadow have only four levels? Why was his redemption arc so last-second and rushed? Am I supposed to care about his relationship with Rouge? Because pretty much every future product with those two made me care, yet this, somehow, failed to. Otherwise though, I've very little to say against the story, I still think it deserves praise aplenty.
Honestly, it'd be incredibly easy to reduce my feelings towards this game to a "Skill Issue", and that wouldn't be entirely wrong. I did struggle a lot with this game, I am not good at it, and I've no fear in admitting that. The problem is that I suck at most video games, I struggled almost if not just as much as I did here with SADX, and I struggled like hell with Sonic Heroes, too, yet I enjoyed both of those games a lot more.
There's a factor that goes into the enjoyment of games that I don't think most people tend to take into consideration, or really think that much about in general.
Incentive to replay.
No, I don't mean replayability. How fun a game is to replay is a completely different topic. What I'm talking about here is how much the game incentivises you to replay it - or, more accurately - to improve at it. Every single time I've brought up my struggles with this game, I'm met with people telling me that I need to keep playing to get better at it and enjoy it more, but that applies to just about every game ever made - at least the ones where what you do actually matters. Of course I'm going to enjoy a game more when I'm good enough at it to not have my flow broken every few seconds, but again, I wasn't any good at SADX or Heroes either, and I would jump at the opportunity to replay those, over this. This game doesn't make me feel like I want to get better at it. I have zero desire to actually have more fun with this game. I know I could get better at it, I know I could enjoy it more, and probably repair my shattered perspective of it, but I truly, from the bottom of my heart, don't want to. This game frustrates me deeply, and I don't believe that putting myself through such a miserable experience over and over and over again has enough of a reward at the end of the tunnel to justify it. I genuinely don't believe this game is worth that, and that upsets me a lot, because I would kill to be one of the people who take one look at this game and are just filled with pure joy.
But I'm not.
I had more fun playing Sonic Lost World. Sorry.