Opinions, opinions...

[Ligar]

Okay, I know Sonic has been spiraling down the toilet of hatred and suck lately due to his recent games. But there's so much confusion, mayhem, and "change this, change that" comments, I don't know whether fans want the old sonic or something new!

Its driving me nuts! >< Some say they want something new and fresh with Sonic and for him to have more variety, and some say they should go back to his old "run, jump, loop de loop, tails sidekicking" days. Has Sonic become this much of a confusing character? What do people really expect from him?

One major problem, apparently, among fans is sonics friends/allys. My opinion is that Sonic has good friends, some who are annoying, but game play wise they're something outside of the speedsters alley. Lets take a walk shall we?

Tails: He should be just like his Sonic Adventure body. Flying through loops, tail whips, running with his tails spinning, or just being Sonics god-mode sidekick. Nothing wrong with this little guy. My only argument is finding a good voice actor. Lately none seemed very characteristic, or "flat" not giving tails any life.

Knuckles: Dreadlocks boy, just needs to either keep his emerald hunting down and get some new stuff for his missions (some running maybe) or duck tape the crap out of that thing and call it a day and just sit up there. Simple as that, Knuckles was fine finding the master emerald shards, my argument is that they should have more variety and "fun" in finding them, instead of making the levels and plains massively huge.

Amy: Cute girl, but she needs to put the hammer and strength of hers to good use. I suggest she have stages like sonics, with speed, but with different platforming, such as smashing things. It would also seem cool if other robots chased after her instead of just one.

Shadow: Put down the gun, get out of the ____ing car, and skate your ass through some damn loops like the friggin sonic clone you are! I suggest that they replace the guns with chaos spears (could consume rings to use) and give him back his equivalent speed to sonic. Also make his chaos powers more interesting instead of just skipping past levels. The time freeze was cool during the boss fights. I suggest you use it in some situations to get to secret areas or high places. The chaos blast was fine, but it got old after a while. They can do whatever with it.

Rouge: Nothing to say. Knuckles clone basically, having her find things besides master emerald shards, with different platforming ideas to knuckles. Maaaybeee- stealth/infiltrating missions?

Cream: ....dead.

Team Chaotix: Hmmm, they were annoying to play as, but I still see potential in them. Not much ideas though. Just hope they get some good ideas soon though.

-And that's my opinion on what his friends should be like. Although I will be argued with about it. Its just that Sonic may be reaching is dooms day and I just want people to make up their minds about him. What are you guy's opinion on this? I just want Sonic to be liked again...

[Zonar Games]

Shadow: Put down the gun, get out of the ____ing car, and skate your ass through some damn loops like the friggin sonic clone you are!

*rolling on the floor laughing*

Dude that is hilarious...I feel the same way...I mean sometimes it is hard for me to listen to the critics and just buy a Sonic game just to try it on myself. I think SEGA needs to stop making 3D sonic games and go back to 2D as you can see with Sonic Advance and Rush they all get good reviews and are so much more valuble.

Sonic could be towards death. I mean I bought SONIC the Hedgehog for the 360 and I guess it was kind of fun. But I heard this one song on the game with this one singer(who I think is japanesse) and the song featured rapper AKON. I was shocked and I think Sonic will die if they don't play those classic Sonic games for millions of hours and use what made the series so hot.

I think they should bring back Jaleel White(Steve Urkel) who used to play Sonic in the old cartoons. I don't think Sonic is ready to be 3d anymore...

[VectorSatyr]

Lets take a walk shall we?

Lets...

---

Shadow: Put down the gun, get out of the ____ing car, and skate your ass through some damn loops like the friggin sonic clone you are! I suggest that they replace the guns with chaos spears (could consume rings to use) and give him back his equivalent speed to sonic. Also make his chaos powers more interesting instead of just skipping past levels. The time freeze was cool during the boss fights. I suggest you use it in some situations to get to secret areas or high places. The chaos blast was fine, but it got old after a while. They can do whatever with it.

If you had read about SONIC nextgen, you'd know that Shadow DOES get new Chaos abillities, albeit they're pretty useless (improvement is improvement - not speaking for the game, though).

Rouge: Nothing to say. Knuckles clone basically, having her find things besides master emerald shards, with different platforming ideas to knuckles. Maaaybeee- stealth/infiltrating missions?

Sure, if you liked doing that with Team Chaotix...

Cream: ...dead.

As if. If they ever make a new Nintendo handheld-based Sonic title, Cream & Cheese WILL be there.

Team Chaotix: Hmmm, they were annoying to play as, but I still see potential in them. Not much ideas though. Just hope they get some good ideas soon though.

Don't count on it.

I just want Sonic to be liked again...

Only the angst hate Sonic himself; everybody else hates Sonic TEAM, for the most part.

[Guest Shadix]

I love Shadow in Sonic Next. It's one of the game's redeeming aspects, especially his cool air dance kill all move. (I wish he could move a bit faster though )

It's Silver that makes me gag, and Tails' aweful speed.

[Aaron C-T]

"I think SEGA needs to stop making 3D sonic games and go back to 2D as you can see with Sonic Advance and Rush they all get good reviews and are so much more valuble."

Wrong. No really, you're wrong. 'Tis not a matter of opinion, either. You see, by going "back to 2D" your implying that Sonic's original 2D roots are better. Sonic Advance and Rush, although I admit I like Rush, are nothing like the original 2D games. They have tons of the problems that the 3D games do, only on a 2D plane. Gaps galore? Check. Multiple chracters that play the same? Check. Running through the same levels with little worthwhile segments tailored to a specific character? Check. Subpar storyline with random characters that didn't really need to be there? Check. And so on.

In my opinion, what Sonic Team needs is to actually take a decent look at their original games. Look back at Sonic, Sonic 2, and Sonic 3 and Knuckles. Forget everything you've done- even the early games like Sonic Adventure. Just play countless hours of Sonic 1-S&K and then make a decent 2D Sonic game using what they've learned from it. From what I've seen with Sonic Next, they haven't done this. They may haved "looked back" but it surely wasn't at their roots. I see tons of inspiration from SA which is, in all honesty, probably a good thing but Adventure Fields don't make a Sonic game. If anything they should've payed more attention to the level design they gave Sonic in SA.

For 2D games if they want to further the "Rush" deal of mixing sprites and models I'd say a Klonoa-style might work, but style doesn't truly matter unless you've got a solid grasp of what made Sonic what he is originally. For 3D I'd say that they need to play a lot of Sonic's SA levels (Sky Deck, Lost World), and some of SA2's better (aka not something like Metal Harbor).

However, as I've said before, these games will be just as crappy unless people stop buying them. Of course though, everyone likes to complain about something and no one likes to actually take a meaningful stance on it. Because like.. if the stance fails it's going to somehow hurt you because you didn't get to play that crappy Sonic game your not satisfied with anyway. Lawl. I still don't have a firm grip on that entire thing from the other topic. And yes, I am talking about a boycott.

[MidimanNull]

I cant comment on Sonic "Next". but..

I liked Sonic Heroes, so does that make me bad? because yeah, no-one liked it.

[VectorSatyr]

I liked Sonic Heroes, so does that make me bad?

Nope, but don't forget about the rest of us. THAT would make you bad.

[Zonar Games]

I liked Sonic Heroes

I forgot to mention that game...Sonic Heroes is a great game I think for the GCN because it was new and fresh. Even the camera angles were good. The music from Seaside Hill is freakin addictive and even the song from Frog Forest. That was Sonic Teams best Sonic 3D platformer since SA & SA2.

[FuzzMaster]

Someone should shoot the ____ing hedgehog before it gets worse if that's even possible.

[BRPXQZME]

Sonic Heroes has many good bits, but some of the execution is flawed in my opinion. Lots of untapped potential, some of which is unused.

[wesker]

What they need to do is make a Sonic Shuffle 2.

What?

[Rael0505]

I still need to get the first one.

[VectorSatyr]

I still need to get the first one.

Don't hurt yourself, there - it ain't worth it.

[MidimanNull]

Don't hurt yourself, there - it ain't worth it.

Opinions, Opinions.

[DimensionWarped]

We pretty much just had one of these just a little while ago... but to summarize my points:

First, Sonic fans generally don't know what they want. Many believe stupid things like making Eggman named Robotnik and having him be the main enemy will magically fix the franchise or that killing Shadow will make Sonic a more interesting character. Really, the Sonic series right now is a mess, and one simple thing can not fix it.

Broken Story: Sonic Adventure was the first major revision of the story. It was the first story redesign and with it came the first artistic redesign. Sonic got taller, blue-er, a mannerism shown through voice. It was rather different from the previous incarnations of the character both with and without speech. Granted, the story was a step up from the lack there-of (and anyone who suggests otherwise should join the 21st century), its not up to par with videogame stories today. Since that is the case, the story requires another complete revision akin to that of Sonic Adventure. Scrap the current visages of the characters, redesign their personalities, their roles, and more or less... their lives. Shadow wouldn't be half as boring a character if his shallow story hadn't been completely resolved in the span of 30 minutes of story telling (about the time of the cutscenes in SA2 I'd imagine)... and when they invented the whole "shadow is an alien" subplot, they pretty much killed everything else (it certainly killed the whole Shadow/Sonic relationship). They would be wise to scrap Shadow and redesign his story to something fresher and more interesting. This applies to Sonic (a character who has yet to have any story at all aside from that infused to him through Shadow...), Tails (who hasn't progressed in any way whatsoever character-wise since SA), and Knuckles (because the guardian thing is tired and boring), and every one else in the cast. And that isn't to say they haven't been redesigning the characters the whole time... they have, but they haven't been doing it on the story level like they did with SA. They just keep trying to tack ____ onto the mess.

Controls: Once again, the control scheme has undergone one major revision since the conception of the series... and that was the switch from 2D Sonic to Sonic 3D/Blast. They scrapped the up and down directions in a way that can only be considered necessity to having a 2D game with the illusion of 3D... IE: no looking up, no crouching down, and a vastly simplified physics on the y dimension. Whats sad though is that this stayed with the series through Sonic Adventure. Certainly, the physics became less simplified, but they are no where near the level of the Genesis Sonic game physics. The result of this caused less of an emphasis on something hugely emphasized in tthe genesis games: reaction to slope. In the Genesis games, for any given area that is sloped, you have a number of possible things do do (crouch to gain speed, try to mantain your position so that you don't have to rely on reflex to get on a nearby platform, etc). In the 3D Sonic games the rolling was out and these sloped areas became nothing but places to run. Anyway, the entire thing could be solved with a Mario 64 style control scheme and a physics redesign. Spinning absolutely needs to be brought back as does a real spindash that isn't just something you wait to charge. Part of the spindash's appeal was in its manual nature. Also, the controls need to be tighter. Sonic Adventure 2 did this best in the 3D series, but since then everything has been sloppy feeling. Changing directions is too slow, changing speeds is just wierd, and jumping makes the camera turn to ____. I don't know how exactly they could fix that, but honestly it needs to be fixed.

Level Design: First, modern Sonic games are pretty cheap for the most part on stage design. They recycle gimmicks, enemies, themes, and just about everything else. Sonic back in 91 (actually, Sonic 2 especially) was a very expensive game to make and the attention to detail was astounding. More money is spent on the modern Sonic games to license commercial physics engines (that aren't used to their potential at all) and make cinematics. The levels aren't fancy enough today. They lack a professional touch when it comes to filling space and making everything less punishable. Spend a little bit of money on making the stages unique. Make gimmicks with unique operation for each level. Make enemies which fit with the level's theme. Make a boss for every stage theme. The lack of spending in Sonic games is attrocious. Thinking of Sonic Heroes... it had pretty much 6 different kinds of enemies with various skin changes and 3 bosses (none of which were interesting or required anything resembling thought to fight). That is NOT enough to constitute a Sonic game.

I blame SEGA's shift to software. Afterall, why make a game expensive when you aren't trying to attract anyone to your platform?

[Aaron C-T]

"Sonic Heroes is a great game I think for the GCN because it was new and fresh. Even the camera angles were good. The music from Seaside Hill is freakin addictive and even the song from Frog Forest."

So wait.. Sonic Heroes is such a great game that the reasons your giving me to back this up are that is has "good camera angles" and "addictive music"? You've got to be freaking kidding me. Sonic Heroes, as Burp said, had some flawed execution in places. And even if they had gotten into that "untapped potential" it still wouldn't have been a Sonic game. Practically everything you all complained about for the first true 3D outings, SA and SA2, is present. Are you saying that crappy level design is acceptable if it's "fresh and new" or if they tweak it? Are you saying that your okay with the fact that by doing that it isn't an actual Sonic game the way the 2D games were? By doing this are you saying that you'll stop complaining about the "old days" in the future?

Honestly, it doesn't make sense. Things complained about pre-SH were falls-to-your-death galore, glitchy controls, uninspired level design, automated loops, lack of multiple paths, and dozens of crappy characters that don't really do anything. Falls-to-death? Check. Glitchy controls on occassion? Check. Uninspired level design? Another level suspended in mid-air and another level of practically nothing but rails.. hmm. Check. Automated loops? Oh hell yes. Lack of multiple paths? Putting a few rings or a rock in the middle of the path that actually takes longer to follow and is only useful for like 5 seconds anyway is totally not the kind of path the old games had at all. Check. Dozens of crappy characters? Sure, it was fun to see the Chaotix back. No, it was not fun running around a level walking over paths that were invisible and lined with fire that hung over huge falls-to-death while looking for some key. I thought you all hated Knuckle's role in the first two 3D games.. hmm. Check.

DW: I agree with a lot of what you said. Although one bit in particular ticks me off. Knuckles being the Guardian of the ME is not something that is tired. It's something that they aren't executing anywhere near properly. The way he was presented at the beginning of SA was perfect like with Tails, however, they decided to just drop everything from that game and simply make Knuckles' a character that is simply there for the sake of being in the game with no actual purpose. Like you said, they haven't been doing it on the level they would with SA. I'm sure Knuckles as the guardian of ME is still something that can be interesting.

Also, rather than blaming software- I blame the fans. If you don't buy, they lose money. If they lose money, chances are they work harder to get that money back. And even if, as I've heard before, us not buying the games isn't enough to offset the thousands of kiddies who will buy anything with the blue blur on it- it truly shouldn't matter as it's not like your satisfied with the game your playing anyway.. why spend 60 bucks on it regardless of whether or not your "making a difference" or hwatever.

[DimensionWarped]

Knuckles as the Master Emerald's guardian is very tired. I insist. Everyone in the entire series is tired and in need of extreme change. Their current jobs and roles in the world are a direct limiter of character expansion and so they should be re-designed... including in the sense of Knuckles being some jerk assigned to guard a freaking rock for all of eternity.

[Duckboy]

DW: I don't think Knuckles being the gaurdian of the Master Emerald is very tired, per say. I think it's just that recently, he has only been gaurdian of the emerald itself, and not the whole island. Angel Island is supposed to be this HUGE, SPRAWLING, THRIVING society of cities, plants, animals, and basically a whole godamned country. But all they really focus on is the emerald itself. Knuckles is a gaurdian of the emerald AND the island. The guys behind Sonic have forgotten this I think.

If they want to make a Sonic game with a story, I think they should abandon all the stupid crap they have come up with, and do something from Satam or Archie. Because as bad as most of the writing was in the comic, there were some really interesting s**t, like King Acorn and everything with The Void. Robotnik taking over Mobotropolis. And hell, the ENTIRE Endgame saga, which was the only truely well written thing in the Sonic comics (The Knuckles comics were always awesome), would make a great story for a game.

F**k shadow. F**k all these new dumb characters like the stupid blaze the cat or the shadow with tenticles flying out of his head. The only two humans that need to be in Sonic are Robotnik (NOT EGGMAN) and Snively.

And I think it would be neat to base a Knuckles game off his comics, because unlike most of the Sonic comics, the Knuckles series had AMAZING writing and great stories. Everything from The Dark Legion to Enerjak to the f**king awesome Mammoth Mogul, his games could be epic on an RPG scale, storywise.

That out of the way, if they are GOING to keep making 3D sonic games, just abandon the whole story all together and do 3D remakes of the old games. I'd love to be able to run around, say, Mystic Cave Zone in 3D or something.

one more thing: URKEL IS THE TRUE VOICE OF SONIC RAH RAH RABBLE RABBLE

[DimensionWarped]

As of the SA revision, all that is on the floating island is a mayan temple, some jungle, and mountains.

And Duckboy, you are far too caught up with the character bull____... which places you firmly in the group of people who don't know what they really want. As a matter of fact, you didn't mention one gameplay based thing.

[shadowgoten]

As of the SA revision, all that is on the floating island is a mayan temple, some jungle, and mountains.

And Duckboy, you are far too caught up with the character bull____... which places you firmly in the group of people who don't know what they really want. As a matter of fact, you didn't mention one gameplay based thing.

HOBOY, you're about to start up a firestorm of opinions

[Aaron C-T]

SG: Why is that? He's perfectly right- taking out all the humans and writing a decent story will do nothing for the actual gameplay and yet Duckboy's acting like changing the name to Dr. Robotnik is what will make the difference. <,<

DW: You're right about the Knuckles thing. And besides, the ME hasn't had an actual purpose in the games since SA and they've just kind of been shoving Knuckles into the games randomly since then. One thing I do realize is that Sonic Team likes to mess with the personality of the characters for no apparent reason. They like to create "love" triangles that don't actually mean anything. For instance, Amy supposedly loves Sonic all the time. Wave admires Tails. Knuckles has a thing for Rouge. Each of these things doesn't really do anything as it's only used for like 5 seconds of each game. Tails' overall personality has changed quite a bit from the way he was portrayed in SA, as has Knuckles'. I think the best thing for them is to actually create a 3D game engine based on Sonic's abilties and gameplay in the old games so that we can finally have a true 3D Sonic. Once they have that engine it'd be best to simply start the story over from scratch as there's no way nor any reason to attempt to save the current one.

[Duckboy]

As of the SA revision, all that is on the floating island is a mayan temple, some jungle, and mountains.

And Duckboy, you are far too caught up with the character bull____... which places you firmly in the group of people who don't know what they really want. As a matter of fact, you didn't mention one gameplay based thing.

Did you miss the "If they want to make a Sonic game with a story" part?

[DimensionWarped]

Don't act as though Archie Sonic is the penultimate end-all to be-all story. And it is exactly as I said. Your notion of a pristine story is the typical fanboy bull____ of making Robotnik be Robotnik and cutting characters untill its just the "original" (as though such a thing exists) group. Tails and Knuckles were every bit as new for their respective entry games as Gamma, Shadow, and Silver were for theirs.

Making the series archie-esque won't have any positive effect on anything. It is neither a fresh style nor a good style. It doesn't reflect an insurgence of creativity into the series as a whole and it would alienate fans of the current series more than an overall reinvisionment of the story. It is the pinacle of lose-lose situations for the series.

[Duckboy]

all i'm saying is that i think the archie stories are better than the dumb stuff sonic team has been coming up with calm down duder its just a game

[Zonar Games]

Duckboy has a point, the archie storylines are so much better I read one recently where Eggman's tryed to shutdown his computer assistant and the computer did'nt want that to happen so he took over one of Eggman's elite machines and even controlled of Bunny Rabbot and Sonic's dad and there was a ultimate showdown between the elite robot and Shadow but Shadow lost and was kidnapped so was Tails and he put those 2 in capsules. He needed Super Shadow for his Chaos Control attack and Hyper Tails is the chosen one...all to get the emeralds in the cosmos...This is a storyline over different issues so it's is just from the one I have. My point is if they turned one of the archie comics into a full length game...it will turn around everything. But that is just story then they would have to work on the camera angles, level design, and music.