To start, a link to my other Sonic R/LTTPs:
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
So yeah, I had trouble getting people together for a few weeks so it's been a while since I last did one of these, but I'm finally back to digging my way through the complete Sonic series. This one's actually a little different, as I actually beat the game completely way back when the DX version came out on a rental, but it's been a while and I wanted to revisit it (I still have a few games left I have yet to touch at all, but for a variety of reasons this ended up being the game for this week.) For what it's worth, I downloaded the base version offered on PS3.
So, to start off with my general opinion on the game... it's honestly pretty weak. It's not as bad as most of what came after (IE Shadow, 06, Black Knight), and it probably beats out Heroes as well... but not by as much as I was expecting. It just mostly doesn't get hit as bad by glitchiness and poor decisions as what followed in its footsteps (though those still DEFINITELY exist here). But even so, it feels like it only ever manages to reach mediocrity at best, and I never really felt like I was having "fun" with the game.
I guess I'll start where the game started me: the Sonic campaign. Like I said above, it functions, but, much as some people love to peg later games as "boost to win," I felt this game may be the closest I've ever felt to "run straight to win." It didn't feel like there was much of anything in the way of interesting challenges or alternate paths along the way, it just kind of... happened. And then of course there's the terrible casino stage I somehow blocked out of my memory of my last playthrough, wherein you have to play the mindnumbingly boring pinball machine till you finally have enough rings to win. And then if you fall from the second area you're locked in a long animation which, far as I can tell, you can't interact with. I'll admit here that MAYBE I missed some alternate means to speed that process up significantly by more thoroughly exploring the casino. The stupid bumper cars at the beginning of Twinkle Park were also not so good, the snowboarding in Ice Cap went on way too long and felt almost entirely pointless since there was virtually no danger, and between the stupid mirrors and the ability to fall down that central chamber and have to climb back up made the ruins area a HUGE frustration.
Now, some recurring problems for the game also made it into the Sonic campaign. Firstly, the camera's just plain crap, and can lead to some serious frustrations. Sonic also got it the worst in terms of talking to NPCs being awkwardly linked to the action button and a little finicky, as talking to people often sent me flying off in a spin dash. For that matter, the Adventure fields are pretty much a prime example of how to make a crappy hub world. It's just plain filler that serves to slow things down as you learn the map enough to wander to the next level or trigger the next event or grab the next pointless item and take it where it need to go. This got ESPECIALLY bad when... Knuckles, I think, had to find a freaking statue hidden in the jungle to take to the temple. Yuck. And of course, the issue that the bosses were as a net whole just WAY too damn easy. Most everything goes down in three hits and can be easily wailed on till they go down, and even the ones that don't are rarely much more challenging. Weirdly enough one of my memories from my older playthrough was that the Egg Viper felt glitchy and broken. Maybe I was just impatient or maybe they actually did fine tune it for the downloadable release (though I doubt that), but this time I found it to work fine and was probably one of the game's better bosses (though it still wasn't very exciting). As another aside, I found it interesting to hear some of the audio callbacks that I didn't get the first time around. I definitely turned to a friend at one point and said, "oh hey, this is Sonic 3D Blast music. That's weird."
The other characters were a bit of a mixed bag, though at the very least they had the decency to have downsized campaigns that don't take them through every single level, unlike some later games. Big was stupid as expected, but his stages are at least quick and his campaign is short, so it's pretty much just "spot Froggy, get him to bite, short fishing mini-game" a couple times and you're done. Oh, and the laughable final boss for him, which took me all of ten seconds to beat. Honestly, my group spent more time trying to figure out how to move the damn car at the beginning, as the "move up to it, double tap the action button to pick up" thing isn't super intuitive. Knuckles was so-so, as the radar could get a little confusing at times, but nothing TOO bad (or exciting). Though I found the dig controls to be kind of finicky. Amy just plain controlled weird. I mean, I'm sure you can get her to work fine, but it was a bit of a pain for me. At least her campaign was once again mercifully short, and I guess the "getting chased through the level" gimmick isn't too bad. The Tails campaign is pretty much "hey, we took the Sonic levels, cut some stuff, and made it a "race" which is pretty much a pointless timer you'll beat anyway!" I guess at least it made the snowboarding area make a little more sense in terms of its existence. Gamma is probably the only part of the game that's halfway fun, and he even has a decent story to go along with him, so I have no beef with him. Easily the best part of the game, and it's a shame the sequel didn't follow up with this model for shooting stages.
Not too much to say about the true final boss, except that it's a LOT easier and far more bland than I remembered. Hit it three times, your awesomely cheesy rock song gets replaced by a bland serious song, and then hit it three more times, all by running along the same short stretch. Though I'll say I wish they followed this conceptual format for later Super Sonic finales, as it's more fun to be running high speed than the flying around space stuff they usually pull, at least IMO. Oh, and making me run around the Adventure fields in the final story feels extra asinine.
Other than that, it's worth mentioning that the game looks awful, even though I'm pretty sure the version I'm playing is based on the DX model (I was actually kind of hoping by not buying the DX upgrade it'd be original DC graphics, as I was curious). I mean, there's of course the low poly nature of a lot of stuff and the textures stretching like hell. Which caused me to laugh a little, as I remember being wowed as a kid playing the demo with the whale section. But what I'm really talking about is how godawful the animation is. I mean, character's movement speed and animations just don't match up most of the time, with characters running at a walking speed or Tails just sliding across the ground awkwardly at one point. And of course EVERYTHING clips all over the place, even in the cutscenes! Then there's stuff like how you can see Tails' tails just moving up and down his back at the base, or Sonic's legs moving up into his stomach when he's moving around. Oh, and for some baffling reason the designers seem to have decided that nobody can ever just stand still, leading to awkward (and sometimes hilarious) out of place bobbing up and down all the time in cutscenes. Of course the true terror is the freakish mouths and lip-synching. I'm curious as to whether things match up properly in the Japanese version, but even if they do I'm sure it still looks creepy and wrong.
So, some final odd observations: The story is at least not as horrible as the serious stuff the series got caught on for a LONG time after this. It's not GOOD, but it's not too offensively bad either. Also, I didn't realize just how much Sonic 06 lifted from this game. I obviously recognized the whale, but I forgot about things like the jumping pads that you have to keep jumping on for a QTE esque sequence, and running on the wind-> grinding on the wind, and a TON of others I picked up on. Also, probably my megaton recognition on playing this: I actually paid some attention during the last of the unskippable credits and picked up a certain name, which I then IMDB'd to confirm. Freaking Big the Cat shares a voice with Duke Nukem! How did I not know this before?!
TLDR; It's not a good game, but it's at least better than 06. Also, Big the Cat is Duke Nukem, holy crap!
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
So yeah, I had trouble getting people together for a few weeks so it's been a while since I last did one of these, but I'm finally back to digging my way through the complete Sonic series. This one's actually a little different, as I actually beat the game completely way back when the DX version came out on a rental, but it's been a while and I wanted to revisit it (I still have a few games left I have yet to touch at all, but for a variety of reasons this ended up being the game for this week.) For what it's worth, I downloaded the base version offered on PS3.
So, to start off with my general opinion on the game... it's honestly pretty weak. It's not as bad as most of what came after (IE Shadow, 06, Black Knight), and it probably beats out Heroes as well... but not by as much as I was expecting. It just mostly doesn't get hit as bad by glitchiness and poor decisions as what followed in its footsteps (though those still DEFINITELY exist here). But even so, it feels like it only ever manages to reach mediocrity at best, and I never really felt like I was having "fun" with the game.
I guess I'll start where the game started me: the Sonic campaign. Like I said above, it functions, but, much as some people love to peg later games as "boost to win," I felt this game may be the closest I've ever felt to "run straight to win." It didn't feel like there was much of anything in the way of interesting challenges or alternate paths along the way, it just kind of... happened. And then of course there's the terrible casino stage I somehow blocked out of my memory of my last playthrough, wherein you have to play the mindnumbingly boring pinball machine till you finally have enough rings to win. And then if you fall from the second area you're locked in a long animation which, far as I can tell, you can't interact with. I'll admit here that MAYBE I missed some alternate means to speed that process up significantly by more thoroughly exploring the casino. The stupid bumper cars at the beginning of Twinkle Park were also not so good, the snowboarding in Ice Cap went on way too long and felt almost entirely pointless since there was virtually no danger, and between the stupid mirrors and the ability to fall down that central chamber and have to climb back up made the ruins area a HUGE frustration.
Now, some recurring problems for the game also made it into the Sonic campaign. Firstly, the camera's just plain crap, and can lead to some serious frustrations. Sonic also got it the worst in terms of talking to NPCs being awkwardly linked to the action button and a little finicky, as talking to people often sent me flying off in a spin dash. For that matter, the Adventure fields are pretty much a prime example of how to make a crappy hub world. It's just plain filler that serves to slow things down as you learn the map enough to wander to the next level or trigger the next event or grab the next pointless item and take it where it need to go. This got ESPECIALLY bad when... Knuckles, I think, had to find a freaking statue hidden in the jungle to take to the temple. Yuck. And of course, the issue that the bosses were as a net whole just WAY too damn easy. Most everything goes down in three hits and can be easily wailed on till they go down, and even the ones that don't are rarely much more challenging. Weirdly enough one of my memories from my older playthrough was that the Egg Viper felt glitchy and broken. Maybe I was just impatient or maybe they actually did fine tune it for the downloadable release (though I doubt that), but this time I found it to work fine and was probably one of the game's better bosses (though it still wasn't very exciting). As another aside, I found it interesting to hear some of the audio callbacks that I didn't get the first time around. I definitely turned to a friend at one point and said, "oh hey, this is Sonic 3D Blast music. That's weird."
The other characters were a bit of a mixed bag, though at the very least they had the decency to have downsized campaigns that don't take them through every single level, unlike some later games. Big was stupid as expected, but his stages are at least quick and his campaign is short, so it's pretty much just "spot Froggy, get him to bite, short fishing mini-game" a couple times and you're done. Oh, and the laughable final boss for him, which took me all of ten seconds to beat. Honestly, my group spent more time trying to figure out how to move the damn car at the beginning, as the "move up to it, double tap the action button to pick up" thing isn't super intuitive. Knuckles was so-so, as the radar could get a little confusing at times, but nothing TOO bad (or exciting). Though I found the dig controls to be kind of finicky. Amy just plain controlled weird. I mean, I'm sure you can get her to work fine, but it was a bit of a pain for me. At least her campaign was once again mercifully short, and I guess the "getting chased through the level" gimmick isn't too bad. The Tails campaign is pretty much "hey, we took the Sonic levels, cut some stuff, and made it a "race" which is pretty much a pointless timer you'll beat anyway!" I guess at least it made the snowboarding area make a little more sense in terms of its existence. Gamma is probably the only part of the game that's halfway fun, and he even has a decent story to go along with him, so I have no beef with him. Easily the best part of the game, and it's a shame the sequel didn't follow up with this model for shooting stages.
Not too much to say about the true final boss, except that it's a LOT easier and far more bland than I remembered. Hit it three times, your awesomely cheesy rock song gets replaced by a bland serious song, and then hit it three more times, all by running along the same short stretch. Though I'll say I wish they followed this conceptual format for later Super Sonic finales, as it's more fun to be running high speed than the flying around space stuff they usually pull, at least IMO. Oh, and making me run around the Adventure fields in the final story feels extra asinine.
Other than that, it's worth mentioning that the game looks awful, even though I'm pretty sure the version I'm playing is based on the DX model (I was actually kind of hoping by not buying the DX upgrade it'd be original DC graphics, as I was curious). I mean, there's of course the low poly nature of a lot of stuff and the textures stretching like hell. Which caused me to laugh a little, as I remember being wowed as a kid playing the demo with the whale section. But what I'm really talking about is how godawful the animation is. I mean, character's movement speed and animations just don't match up most of the time, with characters running at a walking speed or Tails just sliding across the ground awkwardly at one point. And of course EVERYTHING clips all over the place, even in the cutscenes! Then there's stuff like how you can see Tails' tails just moving up and down his back at the base, or Sonic's legs moving up into his stomach when he's moving around. Oh, and for some baffling reason the designers seem to have decided that nobody can ever just stand still, leading to awkward (and sometimes hilarious) out of place bobbing up and down all the time in cutscenes. Of course the true terror is the freakish mouths and lip-synching. I'm curious as to whether things match up properly in the Japanese version, but even if they do I'm sure it still looks creepy and wrong.
So, some final odd observations: The story is at least not as horrible as the serious stuff the series got caught on for a LONG time after this. It's not GOOD, but it's not too offensively bad either. Also, I didn't realize just how much Sonic 06 lifted from this game. I obviously recognized the whale, but I forgot about things like the jumping pads that you have to keep jumping on for a QTE esque sequence, and running on the wind-> grinding on the wind, and a TON of others I picked up on. Also, probably my megaton recognition on playing this: I actually paid some attention during the last of the unskippable credits and picked up a certain name, which I then IMDB'd to confirm. Freaking Big the Cat shares a voice with Duke Nukem! How did I not know this before?!
TLDR; It's not a good game, but it's at least better than 06. Also, Big the Cat is Duke Nukem, holy crap!
