To start, a link to my other Sonic R/LTTPs:
Sonic Adventure
Shadow the Hedgehog
Sonic Heroes
Sonic 06
Sonic and the Black Knight
Sonic 4: Episode 1
Sonic the Hedgehog Game Gear
Sonic 2 Game Gear
Sonic Chaos
Sonic Blast
Sonic Labyrinth
Tails Adventure
Tails' Sky Patrol
Sonic Spinball Game Gear
Sonic 3D Blast
Sonic Spinball Genesis
Sonic CD
Sonic Unleashed Wii
Sonic Colors DS
Sonic Generations 3DS
Well, I finally managed to get to this one, which was definitely one of the ones I was most curious about for this series. And... it's kind of hard to place this one. Its a lot less glitchy and overall horrifying than the worst of the series, but at the same time its flaws are a lot more centric to its design than pretty much any other game in the series. I still don't think it surpasses the awfulness that is Sonic 06 or Shadow or Blast, but at times I almost felt like it was the worst game in the series.
So yeah, the crux of the issue is definitely the controls. I'm NOT a hater of motion controls or unique control schemes, and in fact I'd step up to defend them in games like Skyward Sword, Kid Icarus: Uprising, or the Wonderful 101. But this... this is an example of a non-standard control scheme that just doesn't work. The left to right movement... I actually can live with, at least once you upgrade it/get used to it. The only time it feels terrible are those segments where you're locked into what appears to be a 2d area, but you seem to still kind of have the ability to move side to side. Though that's kind of a separate issue, it's the one area where the game feels like it's kind of mocking you about its controls, taunting how this is essentially a section from any other game made a pain by the controls. Oh, and the wall straddling feels lame, slow, and overly long when it shows up. It isn't even hard outside of the messed up section from the last area where the platforms fall and the spikes won't come out till you get close to them.
The biggest issue with the controls is probably going backwards and how frequently it occurs. I'm not even sure if it's actually a "controls" issue in that I can GET Sonic to go backwards, but it just always feels so awful and slow, and the fact that you can't see where you're going doesn't help. Plus the fact that you switch back to a sprint once you're going forwards again makes it REALLY easy to zoom past what you were aiming for and have to back up again and again and again. Yuck. Oh, and jumping was a huge pain too. I realized partway through the second world that we were essentially playing a whole game of that snowboard level from 06. To a certain degree I think I got used to it, and near the very end we got a skill that made it "charge" a little faster, but it's a huge, huge annoyance having to premeditate and charge all your jumps. Also, the game didn't seem to like its little foot high walls, as if you tried to charge a jump before stopping on them, you'd kind of run into it and break your charge a couple times before it actually worked.
The key to figuring out a lot of the game seemed to come from stopping. Since jumping and stopping acts as a stomp, it's crucial for all the weirdly slow, precise platforming in the game, particularly in the pirate and skeleton levels (yes, lets land on a switch surrounded by spike balls with these controls!) To be fair, it worked... it just wasn't really fun going jump, stop, jump, stop and waiting around for homing attack targets (thank you for appearing and disappearing barrels!)
And of course, this game has waggle done wrong. The homing attack is whatever (though why they decided here ONCE AGAIN that Sonic needed multi-hit enemies that they'd also put in homing attack bridges, I'll never know). But those stupid, stupid jars. They fall WAY too fast, meaning you have to seriously, seriously waggle. And the final boss fight is downright tiring.
The other huge, huge issue with the game is the missions. It's just plain not fun, especially seeing how many of them are "hit these things" or "don't hit these things," which combine to make backing up even a more recurrent issue. I'm sure we probably did more of these than you need to... but still, the game doesn't even give you any indication most of the time of what you SHOULD be doing. Oh, and the Dino Jungle egg escort mission sucks. There's a point with two switches side by side where you can't move over to the left for no explicable reason that I'm pretty sure was hiding the last egg nest I needed, but I could not for the life of me figure out how to get to it. Eventually I died, which respawned all the eggs and left my counter the same, so I decided not to look a gift horse in the mouth. Special shout out here to the stupid Uhu (or w/e his name was) missions as well, because they decided to still have checkpoints, but NOT lock the opponent you're racing's progress to those checkpoints, so if you ever died you had to manually reset because the bastard was way too far ahead.
I'm sure some of the issues I mentioned are solved by the level up/skill system, but that's a problem in and of itself. For example, I didn't really harp on it above, but at the start of the game if you touch anything or jump or damn near anything happens you slow to a crawl. Then the game proceeds to have the early Dino Jungle level start with you being chased by triceratops. And if you get slowed down at ALL (very possible with the bad camera angles for this section), god help you if you're not near a boost, because they will ram you till you're dead and you just can't build back up the speed to get away from them. This was all fixed by obtaining some skills that help you retain and regain speed later on, but that's the problem: they linked not only cute little gimmick skills (IE the boost start to the level, exp when you do certain things, weird little attacks, etc) to the skill system; they also put things essential to have Sonic not control terribly in there. It's a serious issue even if it IS one that clears up as you unlock stuff.
The level themes were okay, some even a little pretty. Though Dino Jungle kind of sucks all around. And they don't really use the Arabian Nights theme very well, but I guess it's at least a little better than what they do with Black Knight. The music's also kind of eh, and they really jammed the theme-song EVERYWHERE. Oh, and the fire-breathing enemies were obnoxious. Hell, a LOT of the stuff combines in a way that is obnoxious and determines your death based on the odds of things matching up right, such as moving spike balls chilling out where you're heading with one of those QTE launch rings (which are also, in fact, quite lame). The plot also isn't great, but it's at least better than Black Knight (and a lot of the other stuff from the 3D games, to be fair), and the final scene with the lamp somehow actually worked in its own silly way. So that's something. Sonic games also need to stop making you sit through unskippable credits multiple times (my friends and I were baffled and annoyed when, for some reason, we got TWO sets of credits after the true final boss). Also, Party Mode is unsurprisingly lame. Played about four minigames with friends on the pirate mode before we just gave up.
So yeah, at times I was willing to call this game the worst of the Sonic games, but in the end it's probably at least above the absolute worst of the worst. But it's still a huge pain, because its flaws are so intrinsic to its design. At the very least, I'm pretty sure this isn't a game I'll be revisiting for fun anytime soon.
Sonic Adventure
Shadow the Hedgehog
Sonic Heroes
Sonic 06
Sonic and the Black Knight
Sonic 4: Episode 1
Sonic the Hedgehog Game Gear
Sonic 2 Game Gear
Sonic Chaos
Sonic Blast
Sonic Labyrinth
Tails Adventure
Tails' Sky Patrol
Sonic Spinball Game Gear
Sonic 3D Blast
Sonic Spinball Genesis
Sonic CD
Sonic Unleashed Wii
Sonic Colors DS
Sonic Generations 3DS
Well, I finally managed to get to this one, which was definitely one of the ones I was most curious about for this series. And... it's kind of hard to place this one. Its a lot less glitchy and overall horrifying than the worst of the series, but at the same time its flaws are a lot more centric to its design than pretty much any other game in the series. I still don't think it surpasses the awfulness that is Sonic 06 or Shadow or Blast, but at times I almost felt like it was the worst game in the series.
So yeah, the crux of the issue is definitely the controls. I'm NOT a hater of motion controls or unique control schemes, and in fact I'd step up to defend them in games like Skyward Sword, Kid Icarus: Uprising, or the Wonderful 101. But this... this is an example of a non-standard control scheme that just doesn't work. The left to right movement... I actually can live with, at least once you upgrade it/get used to it. The only time it feels terrible are those segments where you're locked into what appears to be a 2d area, but you seem to still kind of have the ability to move side to side. Though that's kind of a separate issue, it's the one area where the game feels like it's kind of mocking you about its controls, taunting how this is essentially a section from any other game made a pain by the controls. Oh, and the wall straddling feels lame, slow, and overly long when it shows up. It isn't even hard outside of the messed up section from the last area where the platforms fall and the spikes won't come out till you get close to them.
The biggest issue with the controls is probably going backwards and how frequently it occurs. I'm not even sure if it's actually a "controls" issue in that I can GET Sonic to go backwards, but it just always feels so awful and slow, and the fact that you can't see where you're going doesn't help. Plus the fact that you switch back to a sprint once you're going forwards again makes it REALLY easy to zoom past what you were aiming for and have to back up again and again and again. Yuck. Oh, and jumping was a huge pain too. I realized partway through the second world that we were essentially playing a whole game of that snowboard level from 06. To a certain degree I think I got used to it, and near the very end we got a skill that made it "charge" a little faster, but it's a huge, huge annoyance having to premeditate and charge all your jumps. Also, the game didn't seem to like its little foot high walls, as if you tried to charge a jump before stopping on them, you'd kind of run into it and break your charge a couple times before it actually worked.
The key to figuring out a lot of the game seemed to come from stopping. Since jumping and stopping acts as a stomp, it's crucial for all the weirdly slow, precise platforming in the game, particularly in the pirate and skeleton levels (yes, lets land on a switch surrounded by spike balls with these controls!) To be fair, it worked... it just wasn't really fun going jump, stop, jump, stop and waiting around for homing attack targets (thank you for appearing and disappearing barrels!)
And of course, this game has waggle done wrong. The homing attack is whatever (though why they decided here ONCE AGAIN that Sonic needed multi-hit enemies that they'd also put in homing attack bridges, I'll never know). But those stupid, stupid jars. They fall WAY too fast, meaning you have to seriously, seriously waggle. And the final boss fight is downright tiring.
The other huge, huge issue with the game is the missions. It's just plain not fun, especially seeing how many of them are "hit these things" or "don't hit these things," which combine to make backing up even a more recurrent issue. I'm sure we probably did more of these than you need to... but still, the game doesn't even give you any indication most of the time of what you SHOULD be doing. Oh, and the Dino Jungle egg escort mission sucks. There's a point with two switches side by side where you can't move over to the left for no explicable reason that I'm pretty sure was hiding the last egg nest I needed, but I could not for the life of me figure out how to get to it. Eventually I died, which respawned all the eggs and left my counter the same, so I decided not to look a gift horse in the mouth. Special shout out here to the stupid Uhu (or w/e his name was) missions as well, because they decided to still have checkpoints, but NOT lock the opponent you're racing's progress to those checkpoints, so if you ever died you had to manually reset because the bastard was way too far ahead.
I'm sure some of the issues I mentioned are solved by the level up/skill system, but that's a problem in and of itself. For example, I didn't really harp on it above, but at the start of the game if you touch anything or jump or damn near anything happens you slow to a crawl. Then the game proceeds to have the early Dino Jungle level start with you being chased by triceratops. And if you get slowed down at ALL (very possible with the bad camera angles for this section), god help you if you're not near a boost, because they will ram you till you're dead and you just can't build back up the speed to get away from them. This was all fixed by obtaining some skills that help you retain and regain speed later on, but that's the problem: they linked not only cute little gimmick skills (IE the boost start to the level, exp when you do certain things, weird little attacks, etc) to the skill system; they also put things essential to have Sonic not control terribly in there. It's a serious issue even if it IS one that clears up as you unlock stuff.
The level themes were okay, some even a little pretty. Though Dino Jungle kind of sucks all around. And they don't really use the Arabian Nights theme very well, but I guess it's at least a little better than what they do with Black Knight. The music's also kind of eh, and they really jammed the theme-song EVERYWHERE. Oh, and the fire-breathing enemies were obnoxious. Hell, a LOT of the stuff combines in a way that is obnoxious and determines your death based on the odds of things matching up right, such as moving spike balls chilling out where you're heading with one of those QTE launch rings (which are also, in fact, quite lame). The plot also isn't great, but it's at least better than Black Knight (and a lot of the other stuff from the 3D games, to be fair), and the final scene with the lamp somehow actually worked in its own silly way. So that's something. Sonic games also need to stop making you sit through unskippable credits multiple times (my friends and I were baffled and annoyed when, for some reason, we got TWO sets of credits after the true final boss). Also, Party Mode is unsurprisingly lame. Played about four minigames with friends on the pirate mode before we just gave up.
So yeah, at times I was willing to call this game the worst of the Sonic games, but in the end it's probably at least above the absolute worst of the worst. But it's still a huge pain, because its flaws are so intrinsic to its design. At the very least, I'm pretty sure this isn't a game I'll be revisiting for fun anytime soon.
