Poll of the Day > "Sonic the Hedgehog was never good"

(+) Yeah! (+)

The GameCube remake has a lot of extra glitches. I remember the Game Grumps were laughing at one in the first level, but that doesnt even exist in the Dreamcast version. I wonder how much the Game Grumps trashed Sonic Adventures good name.

I absolutely loathe when the popular opinion about a game is solely due to some dumb eceleb's hot take.
The Amy and Big levels were nowhere near as bad as I was expecting. I dare say they were fun

if any given Sonic game post 2000 had been functionally identical but with an independent IP cast and title, it would have been rightfully ignored and condemned to the garbage bin of gaming history.

Which post-2000 Sonic games have you played?

if any given Sonic game post 2000 had been functionally identical but with an independent IP cast and title, it would have been rightfully ignored and condemned to the garbage bin of gaming history.

the first Sonic Adventure game isn't even THAT jank

if any given Sonic game post 2000 had been functionally identical but with an independent IP cast and title, it would have been rightfully ignored and condemned to the garbage bin of gaming history.

I've only personally played two of them but I've watched Let's plays of every subsequent game and I can see that they're no better, or in some cases even worse. It's the same flat characters and incoherent writing and repetitive game design.

It is jank but people absolutely overstate how buggy it is.

They aren't exactly story-driven games, and platformers generally don't translate well to Let's Plays. I can't help but feel that your opinion isn't particularly well-qualified.

I also question why you've watched Let's Plays of every game in a series you hate. That's kind of weird.

They also just LOOK boring to play. Because you only ever really have two attacks and most enemies die in one hit so there's not even any strategy to the gameplay.

platformers generally don't translate well to Let's Plays.

Platformers like Sonic (that is, distinct from metroidvanias and action platformers like Megaman) rarely have particularly deep, strategic combat. Combat's just not the focus. It's just there to provide an obstacle that can't just be jumped over.

it has sustained it, though

the mere fact that it has sustained itself and been kept relevant all these decades implies that there is a silent majority who thinks the sonic games are good.

Right, so if they don't have a plot worth consuming and they don't have interesting combat and they don't even have exploration that yields anything worth looking for, what exactly is the point of the game? Run in a straight line and try not to die or glitch off the stage? That's cool for a free to play mobile game for a couple hours but not something that can sustain a 30 year running world famous franchise with $60 installments.

Pokemon suffers from the same thing. People bitch about how every new entry is worse than the last and yet they keep buying every single game because they don't understand the concept of voting with your wallet.

this is another example of a silent majority

the few hundred people online who voice their hatred for what pokemon has become is not anywhere close to the tens of millions who buy them.

How is this description different for Mario games and other platformers?

1. Those games are clearly made with more care and have more to do, find, interact with, etc. and 2., even if that weren't the case, it wouldn't be an argument that Sonic games are good, it's an argument that those games are also uninspired and crap.

Right, so if they don't have a plot worth consuming and they don't have interesting combat and they don't even have exploration that yields anything worth looking for, what exactly is the point of the game?

The metacritic scores say otherwise.

Again, sheer sales numbers do not in any way equate to quality. McDonalds and Subway are not considered high quality cuisine by anyone with an opinion worth anything.

no one is talking about quality

also using two (three if we include pokemon from your last attempt) examples of something people really like as an example of no one liking them is crazy

The title of the topic is literally a question of whether the games are or were of quality.

Generally speaking, "is this game good?" means "is this game likely to be enjoyable to play?". It's not looking to answer any deeper questions of objective value or cultural significance or anything more prestigious than that.

In the particular case of Sonic, as I've mentioned elsewhere, what people are saying when they say "Sonic was never good" is generally less "Sonic was never worth playing" and more "Sonic's always been about as janky as many of the modern games are, therefore longtime fans of the series shouldn't expect more than that."

Ok, lets settle this for the 2D era at least

Have you played the Master System Sonic games (Game Gear as applicable)... they're better than Alex Kidd, but still pretty sucky.

Now, lets step up to the real system, the Genesis Sonic games. Out of the 1053 ish Genesis games that were platformers, how many were at least a 5/10? I'd put Sonic 2 over Alex Kidd, Kid Chameleon, Vectorman, and Alfred Chicken... that's for sure.

Honestly the MS/GG Sonics are surprisingly solid and do their own things. Well, okay, I can't say I like the second one at all, but the first and Chaos are pretty decent.

this is like saying N64 games were never good. it was just a new experience for those who never experienced 3D gaming made more memorable with those that played with friends/family.

aside from the marios and the zeldas, the n64 did not have a single thing worth playing

aside from the marios and the zeldas, the n64 did not have a single thing worth playing

I interpret "is it good" as, "does it have some quality about it that makes it worth engaging with over everything else in the culture pile."

And in the case of Sonic games, that answer is almost certainly a No.

aside from the marios and the zeldas, the n64 did not have a single thing worth playing

As others have noted, the fact it was built on a speed gimmick is undermined by the fact you can't just play the game quickly until well after you know what you're doing and have gone through levels countless times.

Right... The more you play the game, the more you learn the game, the better/faster you can play it. It's like literally any other platformer.

And the comparison isn't helping your case. Star Wars never was good, just less bad.

Any other proper platformer you can theoretically do just as well the first time because you're presented with all the visual information you need. Sonic games require you to memorize maps after you stumble through them the first dozen times because you can't possibly know where the path you choose will take you until after you've experienced it over and over.

You cannot argue with the fact that every 3D Sonic game has been some level of a janky broken mess with an incoherent plot and absurd tonal inconsistency.

Soulslike games use the exact same gameplay loop (get your ass kicked a few dozen times until you learn how to deal with a specific boss) and are some of the most popular games of the modern era.

A first time player can't know the layout of a Sonic level because they aren't given the information they need.

You can beat everything in a souls game first try taking no damage if you're good enough.

Still not true. Everything you need to know is conveyed while you're playing. You can beat everything in a souls game first try taking no damage if you're good enough. A first time player can't know the layout of a Sonic level because they aren't given the information they need. A perfect run (without any pause in momentum) can ONLY be done on a replay. You need to know where the path will lead before it shows up on the screen.

aside from the marios and the zeldas, the n64 did not have a single thing worth playing

Right... The more you play the game, the more you learn the game, the better/faster you can play it. It's like literally any other platformer.

You don't *need* to know the layout of a Sonic level in advance, because there are multiple ways to the goal.

What you're suggesting here is that it's impossible for a Sonic game to be interesting or fun unless you can do the level absolutely flawlessly the first time through, which is sort of like saying that Souls games are no fun because you can't no-damage clear every boss in the game the first time through.

You could also do a perfect runthrough of a Sonic game, taking zero damage and not losing any speed, first time through if you have good enough reflexes, and both of those things happening are about equally likely.

I...will not defend the various "special" stages though. Sonic 1 special stage music still induces an anxious trance in me to this day.

Everything about Blue Sphere is great. I guess the problem is it's too easy to get all the Chaos Emeralds in Sonic 3 but in exchange they made the special stages actually fun to play

having Sonic+Tails increases some of the ring targets and Tails' input is lagged, so have fun with that. I only got them all back in the day because my little sister was willing to help.