steps in and reads this post…then walks out again to check the thread door sign to make sure he stepped into the right one
I can’t agree with this…and it really isn’t because of me being a Sonic fan. Sonic has pretty much been the only character during the 16 bit wars to stand toe to toe with the italian plumber. Saying that the best sonic games (I’m going to assume ‘best’ is 1-3k) are average in the grand scheme doesn’t give those titles their due.
Well I’m not gonna take away the impact they had on the future, the culture or just gaming in general. Just saying that in my personal opinion I don’t think they hold up well through the passage of time at all.
Claim number #1: Sonic Unleashed is the best 3D game in the series
Before I start, I have to say that it’s very close between Generations and Unleashed for the #1 spot. Both are very good. Unleashed is only ahead by a small amount.
The main thing that everyone hates about Unleashed is obvious: the Werehog. However, I think everyone remembers it to be a lot worse than it actually is. Many probably remember repetitive combat. Yeah, I can see why you’d dislike that. The thing is though, believe it or not there was actually more to the Werehog levels than just fighting. Does anyone else remember the platforming? The exploration? That one instance of puzzle solving (which there should have been more of)? All three of these things were done well. There were some issues with the camera from time to time but on the whole the platforming was great. Finding hidden pathways that concealed items and medals was always satisfying. I have particular fond memories of Dragon Road Night for this reason. The one puzzle that was in the game was pretty clever and like I said, I wish that there were more puzzles. Besides, the combat wasn’t even that bad. If you actually bothered to learn some of the combos it could be pretty fun.
Even if I think that the Werehog is not nearly as bad as what people make it out to be, I concede that a game based on the Werehog alone would be meh at best. What propels Sonic Unleashed to the level of one of my favourite games of all time is everything else.
As far as the minor stuff is concerned, the graphics are great. Anyone who has played this game knows what I’m talking about. Not much really needs to be said here. The music is up to the Sonic standard. I especially like the final boss theme. It really makes the fight feel epic and tense, even if the boss fight itself isn’t that great. The voice acting’s pretty good too. It was around this time that the 4Kids cast started to get good. It’s a shame that they were replaced, I would have liked to see how much better they could have gotten.
For gameplay, of course the day stages are one of the main draws. The sheer sense of speed is phenomenal. The better you are at the stage, the faster you can do it and the more fun it becomes. This is what Sonic has always been about. This is why I’ve always loved the series. There is seriously no better feeling than getting that shiny S-Rank after memorising all of the shortcuts and playing through the level perfectly. One thing that I’d also like to mention is that this is the only Sonic game to my knowledge (maybe also Generations, I can’t remember) where simply touching an enemy doesn’t hurt you. WHY CAN’T ANY OF THE OTHER GAMES HAVE THIS? IT’S SO MUCH BETTER! This is one of those things that I was talking about that Colours just changed for no reason. Another thing that I like is that when you get hit, you just lose a handful of rings instead of losing every single one and having to recollect them. I’m glad that they did this because a lot of the time you’re not going to be able to recollect your rings. Again, Colours undoes this for no reason.
The one, main thing that Unleashed had that no other Sonic game has captured is immersion. When I was playing Sonic Unleashed, I didn’t just feel like I was playing a bunch of levels in a game. I felt like I was on an adventure to save the planet. There were several contributing factors to this. Part of this was in the hub worlds. I liked exploring the hub worlds, looking for medals. I liked going into shops and just buying a whole bunch of chili dogs and sharing them with Chip. I liked being able to talk to characters like Amy and Tails outside of just cutscenes. New continents didn’t just open up one after the other. The opened up during each other, and often so you’d have to travel back and forth between places instead of just finishing a continent and being done with it. This made the world just feel so much more connected. Making the Werehog into an alternate Sonic instead of just a separate character was genius. The gameplay doesn’t shift from character to character. You’re with Sonic every step of the way. This is your adventure just as much as it’s his. As you gain new abilities and level up your characters, this actually stays with you for the entire game. Sonic Unleashed is one of the few Sonic games (or just games, for that matter) where I often want to delete my save file and play the game from start to finish, just for the whole experience again.
And, there are other things that I love. I love seeing Eggman get his ass kicked in arguments with Orbot. I love Professor Pickle and his strange obsession with cucumber sandwiches. I love the idea of having extra non-compulsory levels. The cutscenes were perfect, from the kickass opening to the ending. Everything about Sonic Unleashed, aside from some problems with the Werehog, was just so right.
Why do you think they don’t hold up?
Best Sonic games in recent years are Colors and Generations, in that order.
Before the above two, the last good Sonic game was S3K.
If you think otherwise, I refer you to this link for further explanation.
Helllllll no. Shitty way to end that fucking arc with some lame ass launch base.
Claim number #2: Sonic Colours sucks
I was super hyped for this game. I saw that they were reusing the Unleashed gameplay that I loved, and so I figured that it was going to be great. When I actually bought it and played it though, I was sorely disappointed.
First, I’ll go over the positives. The music was Sonic standard as usual. The cut-scenes were hilarious. The voice acting was superb. The final boss fight was pretty fun.
This game had one huge problem above all else: there was no sense of speed. At all. Well, not at all, but there was very little of it compared to Unleashed or Generations. Most of the game was just bland 2D platforming. Now, I have nothing against 2D platforming as a concept (even if I prefer 3D platforming) but it was executed crappily. You see, in both Sonic Unleashed and Generations, there was one gameplay type that was focused on speed and another that was focused on platforming (at least moreso than the other). In Sonic Colours, however, they took the gameplay type that was focused on speed and made it focused on platforming. It just doesn’t work. It’s like substituting Mega Drive Sonic gameplay into a Mega Man or Mario game. It just doesn’t work. So yeah, good sense of speed and good platforming from Unleashed was replaced by just bad platforming in Colours.
Further evidence that there was no sense of speed is in Colours’ ranking system. In Generations and Unleashed, the faster you did the level the better rank you got (albiet Generations was much more lenient than Unleashed, which I didn’t like). In Colours, in order to get an S-Rank you have to pretty much just backtrack to get every ring and use Wisp powers over and over for the point bonus. This is another stupid change from Unleashed.
Another thing is that to sidestep, you have to press to either side instead of pressing L and R, which means you have to let go of forward in order to do it. It’s just awkward. I know that it’s due to the limitations of the controller, but still. All of these just add up to make a not very fun game.
I don’t really like the whole hold down boost button and run in a straight line mechanic, so I favor adventure series over the newer 3d games, but that’s just me. I like generations a lot, but I do not like the boost mechanic still. I didn’t like sonic colors like at all 
Claim number #3: Sonic 3 is better by itself than S3&K
Attaching S&K obviously has its advantages, like access to the Hyper Sonic, access to Doomsday Zone, being able to play as Knuckles, etc. The main reason why I like standalone 3 better is simply just because I didn’t like the Sonic and Knuckles levels. Mushroom Hill was okay. Flying Battery was annoying because of all of the bottomless pits and various other death traps, which I thought just felt cheap. Sandopolis Act 1 wasn’t so bad, but Act 2 was terrible. Having to constantly turn lights back on sucked. The other levels I can barely remember. The last time I started a S3&K run, I noticed a huge drop in fun after Mushroom Hill. So, I decided that it’s better to just stop after Launch Base. Besides, having standalone S3 has two major benefits: you get the Big Arm boss fight, which is awesome, and you also get much better credits music.
Heh yea anything to see to PsychoJosh froth at the mouth like a rabid Wolverine.
No they really aren’t. The first 3 sonic games helped push Platformers in new directions, with unique, large, varied stages with lots of different routes through them. They are brilliant games.
I hated the Werehog stages sooo fucking much i stopped playing the game before I finished it and I almost never do that. Give me a 4 minute Sonic stage then an hour+ long stage of slow, clunky combat and platforming. Yea I remember the platforming. The wehrehog had a shitty jump, an equally shitty double jump, and a lot of the jumping was around blind corners or the camera was directily over your fucking head. As for puzzles, yea block puzzles are sooo now. If you think block puzzles are good in this day an age your out of your mind. It was like the antithesis of Sonic gameplay. Then a number of the day Mission side stages where like a minute long, over huge pits, you spent most of your time grinding.Get done with a long as fuck Wherehog stage and then have to do another one or two to collect enough coins to get the next set of stages. God that game went out of it’s way to piss me off at every turn.
Unleashed is shit. It coming out after games like the Ratchet Series, the Jak series, the Sly Series, so on and so fourth, I could name dozens of amazing 3D platformers that Sonic Unleashed fails to even come close to matching because it’s mechanics are fucking awful.
Back in Time >>>> Can you feel the sunshine
come at me brah…
I’ll never play Unleashed, it’s cool someone likes it but I’m afraid that isn’t gonna sway anyone to play it. The original Sonic games are legendary and deserve all the praise they get. I don’t think they are overrated in anyway, maybe you can say some of the newer games are BUT that is amongst Sonic fans. The general masses still think Sonic sucks as a whole so you can’t claim those are overrated. Even from a critics standpoint, both Generations and Colors just have 70+ on metacritic so Sonic being overrated is laughable.
And it’;s too bad so much of Unleashed relies on that shitastic wherewolf levels, because the full length day stages tend to be pretty great. Spagonia, Dragon Road, and the Africa Level with the huge tree stand out as some amazingly well done levels but most everything else is turd doo. Even the Hub aspect of the game is balls compared to SA1…that’s really sad cuz SA1s hubs aren’t that great either.
In my opinion, Sonic 1 is actually pretty boring outside of Green Hill Zone and Starlight Zone. I don’t see myself ever replaying that game because it’s just so… slow. Kind of ironic how the first game for a hedgehog that is supposed to be rolling around at the speed of sound contains levels like Marble Zone and Labyrinth Zone. Man, those levels suck. Marble Garden Zone and Hydrocity Zone are a ruins level and a water level being done right, respectively. And don’t forget that since it’s Sonic 1, you have to trudge through three acts of those levels.
And I don’t find the Werehog levels in Unleashed to be bad, just… OK. I mean, I won’t ever play Unleashed again for the Werehog levels, but they could have turned out a lot worse. The mechanics worked the way they intended, and the new moves you learned throughout the game were pretty cool. However, what irritated me the most was the super-repetitive battle music. I mean, the actual song was good, but couldn’t they have at least remixed it for every level? Hearing trumpets sounding off inside an ice cave just doesn’t fit.
What I liked most about Unleashed (outside of Sonic’s gameplay, of course) was the overall presentation of the game. I do agree with JediLink that the game really did feel like an adventure when I played it. I didn’t find Chip to be annoying, so seeing how he and Sonic interacted with each other in various cutscenes was pretty cool. The various bonus clips you can unlock were very enjoyable, and I wish Sega would produce something like Night of the Werehog again. And, of course, the game looked absolutely beautiful. Not saying that Colors and Generations aren’t, but this game was the first to use the Hedgehog Engine and it looked absolutely stunning when I first played it.
I like Colors and Generations better overall, but if they are missing something, then it’s definitely the presentation Unleashed had. I hope the next Sonic game (if it’s still using modern Sonic’s controls) combines the refined gameplay of Generations with the presentation shown in Unleashed.
I do. That’s why I returned the game, because I don’t want to remember that ever again.
Unleashed had horrible level design, horrible camera, horrible controls. The game overall was basically 100% trial and error because it threw things at you so fast that you had no time to react and Sonic was so slippery that clutch reactions would probably kill you. Great for entertaining speedruns, awful for just playing through the game.
Then there’s Werehog. Just…ugh. Entertaining at first, then they start putting you hanging above bottomless pits with the most uncooperative camera. You end up playing a more frustrating version of Mario 64 with bland fighting in between.
Both of Unleashed’s parts were crap in their own way, so it totally was not just Werehog. Even Sonic Adventure 1 was a lot more enjoyable to actually play than Unleashed is.
Colors took what sucked about Unleashed and surgically removed it. The level design is better, the gameplay is better and there are no town hubs. I don’t understand why Sega keeps putting town hubs in Sonic games! I don’t like them! I’m pretty sure most people don’t like them…
the only thing i hate about Sonic Adventure 2 was not being sonic/shadow and how you had to hold down B in order to get your spindash.
honestly i like sonic adventure 1
I still prefer SA2 to 1 if only for one reason…NO TOWN HUBS.
Well, what about just level hubs? In Unleashed, there was the regular town hub and then there was a level hub. Generations also had 2D level hubs.
I honestly wouldn’t object to having those back.
enough about which games are better
which game do you guys think is worse shadow the hedgehog or sonic 06
i say shadow
Shadow the Hedgehog.
06 atleast had interesting glitches.