• Light/Dark
  • Ever wanted an RSS feed of all your favorite gaming news sites? Go check out our new Gaming Headlines feed! Read more about it here.
  • We have made minor adjustments to how the search bar works on ResetEra. You can read about the changes here.

Sonic the Hedgehog Community |OT| There’s no end to this franchise!

Waddle Dee

Waddle Dee

Banned
Nov 2, 2017
3,725
California
Sonic 4 Episode 1... functions...

It's completely soulless and devoid of anything engaging or inventive, but I guess it functions...

Episode 2 fares a bit better because it more or less tried to be it's own thing but it still wasn't particularly good.
 
Indigo Rush

Indigo Rush

Member
Nov 8, 2017
27
Sonic 4 Episode 1 is a below average platformer that's inoffensive at best...

...but as a 2D Sonic game aiming to be like the original Genesis games, it's pretty bad. It doesn't control right, it doesn't feel right, the levels aren't designed right, it has no sense of ebb and flow, and its structure is not ideal for a Sonic game. The team behind it may have had the best intentions (I'll defend Ken Balough to my grave), but they missed the mark tremendously.

Framed in that context, it's pretty unforgiveable.
 
Nocturnowl

Nocturnowl

Member
Oct 25, 2017
26,148
Sonic 4, the game where using a spin dash and rolling down hills grants barely any speed and no momentum based trickery, but performing a homing attack on nothing gets you to top speed instantly.
 
Village

Village

Member
Oct 25, 2017
11,811
Sonic 4 is a bad time

When I learned it was some mobile game they just turned into that it made more sense
 
TheOGB

TheOGB

The Fallen
Oct 25, 2017
10,010
Sonic Advance 3 is better than Sonic 4, but I don't think that's a hot take

I liked the partner mechanic, though.
 
TheOGB

TheOGB

The Fallen
Oct 25, 2017
10,010
Battle and Advance 3 are two of my favorite Sonic soundtracks. The games were definitely "DIMPS-y" but I still love the hell out of the GBA titles, those two especially.
 

Deleted member 34949

Account closed at user request
Banned
Nov 30, 2017
19,101
Battle was actually a Sonic Team joint.

Advance 3 has a neat soundtrack, but that GBA soundchip didn't do it a lot of favors.
 
Xpike

Xpike

Member
Oct 25, 2017
1,676
i feel as if I should like the advance series, but there is a certain something the OG games had that its missing from them.
 

Seeya

Banned
Oct 27, 2017
7,984
BlazeHedgehog said:
As somebody who went back to Sonic 4 Ep 1 as part of writing/producing a Sonic Mania video review that still isn't done, I can definitely say it's not underrated at all

It is turds in a blender, forever
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Nah aside from the mobile version having touch controls and the bonus stages being a pain it's a great bite sized game. The use of the homing Attack and bounce pads keep things light so that doesn't overstay its welcome or require precise inputs. The level design is similarly forgiving, focusing on what you need to do instead of how to execute it with only one or two cheap instances overall that are easily overcome with minor pattern recognition. The physics are busted but not in a way that inhibits the game or is frustrating, it just results in funny things like you standing on a slope at a 90 degree angle.

And the music in the Labyrinth stage is bitching.

If you're going to compare it against full fledged 60 dollar 2D platformers designed to be on consoles and the like of course it's very lacking, but as a cheap mobile or digital only game it's exceptionally well designed to be exactly what it is, fun, fast, and easy.

It's not a bad game, it's just slightly sub par cotton candy when people were rightly expecting a steak.

That being said it doesn't hold a candle to the classics or Mania.
 
Last edited:
OP
OP
Professor Beef

Professor Beef

Official ResetEra™ Chao Puncher
Member
Oct 25, 2017
22,501
The Digital World
You have all of those qualifiers to make Sonic 4 seem like it's not bad, but take them all away and you've still got a heaping pile of shit. No game should have that many handwaves just to be considered mediocre.
 
BlazeHedgehog

BlazeHedgehog

Member
Oct 27, 2017
702
Redhead On Moped said:
You wound me Blaze...

Did you at least enjoy any of the other 4 games, or Christian Whitehead's Sonic CD?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Episode 2 was... okay... ish. It was a heck of a lot better than episode 1, and I guess it's probably better than, like, Sonic Advance 3, but it still has a lot of very annoying problems that I genuinely hate. Difficulty balancing, for one, as there are big weird spikes every now and then where one section will be WAY harder than anything before or after it

Boss fights also all universally suck because they're all super long and super tedious, with multiple attack phases and HUGE unskippable introductory animations. I timed it, once, and the Oil Desert boss's intro animation is 61 seconds long. You have to watch it every single time you die. Which happens a lot, because every new phase has a new spike in difficulty. Sometimes you'll be 3-4 minutes deep in fighting a boss and something cheap will kill you out of nowhere. So that one boss can be something you easily spend 10-20+ minutes on just for dying only a handful of times, and a lot of that time is spent watching animation you've already seen and going through long attack phases you've already fought through, over and over and over again. I wanted to tear my face off.

Also the music still sucks in Episode 2. Meowmix Zone!

The only redeeming thing about Episode 2 is that playing through co-op with a friend on Xbox Live turned out to be surprisingly awesome, particularly for the Sky Chase level where player 2 has to manually fly the plane to make sure player 1 doesn't fall and die. Harrowing is a good word to describe how being Sonic in that situation feels.

I'm also not a very big fan of Sonic CD in general, but I'll admit Christian Whitehead's Sonic CD is the best version. I own it on almost every platform it's available on! But, then, I guess you can also say that with Sonic CD in general. (Sega CD, PC CD-ROM, Gamecube, Xbox 360, Steam, Android)
 

Seeya

Banned
Oct 27, 2017
7,984
You have the odd habit of hating on the best 2D sonic game.

Professor Beef said:
You have all of those qualifiers to make Sonic 4 seem like it's not bad, but take them all away and you've still got a heaping pile of shit. No game should have that many handwaves just to be considered mediocre.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Yeah that's fair. It won't argue that it isn't a big pile of shit when put up against other games in a straight up comparison. How much was Mania again? 5 dollars more expensive?
 
A Syrian Communist

A Syrian Communist

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
4,466
I mean, I wouldn't even say it's a big pile of shit in comparison to anything, I just thought it was a big pile of shit. I don't play cheap mobile games because I think most of them suck and Sonic 4 is no exception to that imo.
 
BlazeHedgehog

BlazeHedgehog

Member
Oct 27, 2017
702
Seeya said:
You have the odd habit of hating on the best 2D sonic game.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

I love the art direction in Sonic CD, I love the music, I love the ideas

I do not love to play Sonic CD because dealing with finding the right time warp panels, finding enough space to maintain speed, finding the robot generator, it's all INSANELY tedious. It's not like Sonic 3 where you have like, five or six warp rings per act. There's one robot generator, and often only 2-3 good places to build up speed. I don't want to say I hate it, but maybe I kind of hate it? At least a little bit. Unless you go out of your way to memorize the position of every robot generator, you can spend like, 20 minutes in some acts looking for it.

And the strategy of "just do the special stages and ignore the robot generators" isn't a great option either because the collision detection on the UFOs was janky in the Sega CD version and is still pretty janky in the Taxman remaster.

And some levels are specifically designed to kind of fuck you over, to send you hurtling miles away from where you want to be, or maybe even trick you in to warping to a time zone you don't want to be in, like a Bad Future. And, like, what's your reward for a Good Future? A few more rings? A new song you could listen to on Spotify? No enemies, even though you probably killed half the stage in the 8 minutes it took you to destroy the generator and warp all the way to a Good Future?

But you have to get all the Good Futures, otherwise the game will taunt you for not doing it right. Great! Awesome! Thanks!

Taxman's version does help it be a little easier to stomach, however:

1. The Sonic 2 version of the SpinDash is nice
2. Levels themselves were given a once-over to get rid of weird slope hiccups
3. If you do try for special stages, if you run out of time, you can just pause before the fail screen comes up and pick "Return to Menu" and you'll restart the Special Stage with no penalty

But that still doesn't mean I like the game. It's still Sonic CD, at the end of the day, and I'd still rather be playing Sonic 2 or Sonic 3.
 
Last edited:
Tygre

Tygre

Member
Oct 25, 2017
11,155
Chesire, UK
Sonic CD is a chore.

Trying to make an exploration focused 2D platformer is a cool idea, but the execution and level design are godawful.

It's fun in a kind of alt-history what-could-have-been way, but it can't hold a candle to 2 / 3+K
 
A Syrian Communist

A Syrian Communist

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
4,466
Tbh CD is my third favorite after Mania and 3K. I like the exploratory focus and the vibe. What really confuses me is Sonic 2 being the most popular, since that's easily the closest to "I don't hate it but I think I hate it" for me. The fucking wack enemy placement, difficulty spikes, and horrible special stage will forever make Sonic 2 a chore for me.
 
Nocturnowl

Nocturnowl

Member
Oct 25, 2017
26,148
I like CD in all departments except it's actual approach to level design.
Bollocks to that exploratory hunt angle when the game does its absolute best to funnel you everywhere but where you want to go.
I'll have fun enough just running through its slapdash levels simply because the base of classic Sonic works well enough on its own.
 
Shadow Hog

Shadow Hog

Member
Oct 26, 2017
183
To be fair, Shadow was, like, 1 year old or something when he knew Maria.

Or something. Honestly, his age is super vague in general.
 
Waddle Dee

Waddle Dee

Banned
Nov 2, 2017
3,725
California
Sami said:
why are shadows legs so long there

I miss when Sonic was shorter than that for year old girl and Mr. Know-it-All in Station Square
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Sonic is supposed to be cool. Being tall is cool. It's why Sonic has continued to change his look over the years. When a defining trait of your mascot is that he's "considered cool by kids"... he better keep up with what's seen as cool.

Back when Sonic got his first radical redesign, in Adventure, I know most kids(myself included) thought he looked cool. I still think he does. Sure, the Classic design of Sonic has aged extremely well and is iconic, but it's more cute than cool nowadays.
 

Deleted member 34949

Account closed at user request
Banned
Nov 30, 2017
19,101
He absolutely deserves it. Mania's probably my favorite OST in the series, and would be my OST of the year if not for Nier.
 
Joltik

Joltik

Member
Oct 25, 2017
10,764
I hardly keep up with awards on websites, but I'm assume that this category was very competitive this year with the amount of excellent OSTs released. Congrats to Tee Lopes.
 
ned_ballad

ned_ballad

One Winged Slayer
Member
Oct 25, 2017
48,262
Rochester, New York
I finally got all the emeralds and got to the true final boss of Mania... and it's a big let down. Pretty boring and super easy fight.

It almost feels better if the game just ended on the ending it had before you collect all the emeralds.
 
Nali

Nali

Member
Oct 25, 2017
3,665
As far as we can tell from unused assets, both final bosses were hastily cobbled together from the assets produced for scrapped ideas, and they just straight up didn't have time to redo them satisfactorily.
 
Virtua Sanus

Virtua Sanus

Member
Nov 24, 2017
6,492
I am a little late to this discussion, but I think Sonic 4 Episode I if seen in a bubble is average to perhaps even above average for a mobile platformer of it's era. As a Sonic game it would have been a seriously backhanded sequel to Advance 3 but as a sequel to 3K it is basically the most offensive possible thing in the franchise.

Runner up for most offensive thing in the franchise is the reveal of Shadow's game during an award ceremony for Sonic where Shadow shoots bullets through Sonic's games.

 

Deleted member 34949

Account closed at user request
Banned
Nov 30, 2017
19,101
Virtua Sanus said:
I am a little late to this discussion, but I think Sonic 4 Episode I if seen in a bubble is average to perhaps even above average for a mobile platformer of it's era. As a Sonic game it would have been a seriously backhanded sequel to Advance 3 but as a sequel to 3K it is basically the most offensive possible thing in the franchise.

Runner up for most offensive thing in the franchise is the reveal of Shadow's game during an award ceremony for Sonic where Shadow shoots bullets through Sonic's games.

Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Man, to be a fly on the wall in the room where this went down in. I can only imagine the confusion.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.