Sonic Generations: Two Years Later

[Bright Eyes]

You know what's funny? When a new game is announced/comes out everyone is like "Awwwwww it's teh best Sonic game evah! It's teh best game since S3&K and it's DEFINITELY better that your precious Adventure gaems and what have you!" If you call the game mediocre or DARE to call it meh or nothing special, everyone becomes so angry like you killed their dog or something.. And another thing happens every single time as well. When a year passes or two.. Everyone begins to think sober and sees that the game is indeed mediocre/not so great etc.

This happened with Unleashed, this happened with Colors (God, with Colors it was at it's worse), this is happening now with Generations.

Just my thoughts..

I get annoyed more because the reasons why people don't like the game is because of tiny differences in physics between Generations and the classics. Besides, I think most Sonic fans really liked and still like Colours and Generations. It's just the fringe hardcore Sonic fans who know absolutely everything about the Genesis games and refuse any kind of change.

I wouldn't mind if people would use more substantial reasons, or reasons that are slightly different.

Edited October 27, 2012 by Bright Eyes

[Kuzu]

You know what's funny? When a new game is announced/comes out everyone is like "Awwwwww it's teh best Sonic game evah! It's teh best game since S3&K and it's DEFINITELY better that your precious Adventure gaems and what have you!" If you call the game mediocre or DARE to call it meh or nothing special, everyone becomes so angry like you killed their dog or something.. And another thing happens every single time as well. When a year passes or two.. Everyone begins to think sober and sees that the game is indeed mediocre/not so great etc.

This happened with Unleashed, this happened with Colors (God, with Colors it was at it's worse), this is happening now with Generations.

Just my thoughts..

Oh don't get me wrong, it's technically better built than the Adventure games, but the Adventure games were already pretty mediocre to begin with, so that's not saying much.

Edited October 27, 2012 by Ragna the Bloodedge

[Balding Spider]

I feel my opinion on the game as a whole hasn't really shifted much. It was a good game that improved upon the modern gameplay formula, yet failed in caputuring what made the classic games so good like having fixed bouncing, poor rolling, and having a spin-dash so over powered it was like becoming a cannon ball. The game also lacked polish in specific parts, which was a real shame after the previous entry in the Sonic series was so well put together.

And then theres the story... Okay many of you know I'm for simple straight forward stories in my Sonic games but they failed at that here, the story was just boring. Once again the supporting cast switches from useless to terrible, and never once do you feel like the world is Jeopardy despite a time destroying monster skulking about and the most it does is just unlock more stages for you and then roar away. We needed a villian with an overall goal througout the game, not an angry screaming purple mist that for some unkonwn reason is hurt by a chaos emerald.

Edited October 27, 2012 by Balding Spider

[Komodin]

You know what's funny? When a new game is announced/comes out everyone is like "Awwwwww it's teh best Sonic game evah! It's teh best game since S3&K and it's DEFINITELY better that your precious Adventure gaems and what have you!" If you call the game mediocre or DARE to call it meh or nothing special, everyone becomes so angry like you killed their dog or something.. And another thing happens every single time as well. When a year passes or two.. Everyone begins to think sober and sees that the game is indeed mediocre/not so great etc.

This happened with Unleashed, this happened with Colors (God, with Colors it was at it's worse), this is happening now with Generations.

Just my thoughts..

[Kuzu]

I think the reason the story sucks so much is not because it's simple, but because it wastes your time trying to tell said simple story; We already know the plot of the game, why waste our time telling us shit we already know? It's fucking annoying, if you're going to have a simple story don't waste my fucking time with exposition on shit I already know.

[Nepenthe]

I think the reason the story sucks so much is not because it's simple, but because it wastes your time trying to tell said simple story; We already know the plot of the game, why waste our time telling us shit we already know? It's fucking annoying, if you're going to have a simple story don't waste my fucking time with exposition on shit I already know.

[Kuzu]

It's a shame Sonic Team don't seem to care about their stories as much as their gameplay.

[Solkia]

You know, I know I've said this many times before, but this game was in development for 3 years supposedly.

[Chili Dawg]

It's a shame Sonic Team don't seem to care about their stories as much as their gameplay.

[...]

There's worse problems with the story than that. The settings and characters are wholly underutilized as far as tying them to the narrative with any purpose or meaning. You could replace every level and boss with another one arbitrarily and waste the extended cast altogether and you'd not fundamentally change anything because the story doesn't rely on any of that to function; at the end of the day, it's not really about anything except for Sonic stopping Eggman yet again. Everything else that you see is just wholly irrelevant.

Even worse is that the development between the characters that are there is nonexistent. All of the Classic and Modern fodder we get is relegated to about two moments: the mirror scene, and the scene with the red Chaos Emerald. Just massive wasted potential all around; to see Modern Sonic significantly reacting to things he's already experienced and perhaps being surprised at their differences (no really, why is Perfect Chaos green?) and Classic Sonic being curious of the new levels and perhaps getting into some trouble as a result would've been great stuff to watch.

There's also some gaping plotholes that make me believe that there was more to the story but it was all left on the cutting room floor. It's so sloppy that there's no other explanation. Like when the characters talk about interacting with the Time Eater or at least being aware of what's going on for example, even though we clearly saw everyone sucked up at the party and frozen after that, an experience Modern Tails equates to "being dead." So how does Vector even come to the conclusion that it's possible someone's controlling Time Eater when he'd been frozen all the time? When in the world did Blaze fight the monster enough to conclude that she was unable to stop it? How was Espio able to sense anything?

And ultimately, how did Modern Sonic get out of being trapped in that black alternate dimension?.... How did either Sonic even get in there? What is it? How do you move about in it? The whole time we were told that beyond the levels, the only thing that existed at the time was White Space, so....

Yeah, the whole damn thing's just a mess.

[Kuzu]

That just means they have their priorities straight.

[Soniman]

That justifies having a shitty story?

[Wraith]

Who honestly gives a fuck about the story? The game was great. What else do you need?

[Kuzu]

It does when the gameplay more than makes up for it.

[azoo]

Everyone has already said what I had to say about this game. But since the opinions about the game in this thread have been all over the place, let me elaborate.

Sonic Generations was an alright game. The classic gameplay wasn't accurate but it wasn't inoffensive and the level design was actually pretty great. Ironically the opposite for modern Sonic, the gameplay was vastly refined and some of the best Sonic's had in 3D but the level design, while occasionally opening up, was often rather blocky. Either way everything in this game (including the bosses)' difficulty was way too low.

Also, there was no incentive to complete anything in this game. It was literally just "run through these levels, bam its over". 2 hours of gameplay and that's it. Difficulty was, as said, way too easy, no good story elements to hold it together (Shadic and Nepenthe already covered all of this), and the HUBworlds were simplified to a small 2D plane with a whole bunch of missions I felt no interest in playing.. which they also could've also spared in sake of making more acts to play, or adding playable characters.

And BY THE WAY,

It does when the gameplay more than makes up for it.

No. Gameplay and story come together in harmony to make a good experience. The only time I don't see the importance of a story is in more arcadey games, and series that establish themselves not needing a story. Sonic is not one of those.

[Diogenes]

It does when the gameplay more than makes up for it.

Oh, well, call me when they get there.

I can't complain about them being more concerned with gameplay than story; that's pretty much the objectively correct way to go about making a game, and, you will not be surprised to learn, I think they genuinely need to focus on the gameplay now.

But they just hired some new writers, guys with some pretty solid credentials, and it seems like they're chaining them down rather than letting them do their job. They've made some progress in characterization, but aside from that they've been wasted. What's the point of hiring them if you're going to have them writing shit that any idiot off the street could do?

[Wraith]

You guys are missing the point, the gameplay is good, but that's not what I'm judging; the story sucked plain and simple and I'm not going to overlook that simply because the gameplay is good.

Nobody cares when Rayman Origins disregards everything about Rayman.

Nobody cares when Mario does whatever the fuck.

As Soon as Sonic goes "Fuck it we're just going to make a game this time", people bitch.

You're just searching for things to complain about now.

[Soniman]

Im not saying Sonic doesn't need a story (and a good one at that), all I'm saying is that in this instance the gameplay is good enough that the hilariously cruddy story doesn't really get in the way of me enjoying the actual game part of the game to much.

Edited October 27, 2012 by Soniman

[Nepenthe]

No component to a game being good really justifies any of the other ones being shitty, because the fact remains that a good game with a good story will always be better than a good game with a bad story. This strange idea gamers perpetuate that you should be allowed to sacrifice one component's quality so long as one of them is fine, and thus mediocrity or even outright shittiness in one area is justified completely baffles me, because it's ultimately limiting the quality of games as a whole. My belief is that if you're going to put a story in your game, write a fucking story, otherwise don't even bother if you're just going to phone it in anyway.

[Autosaver]

Let's be fair guys, the story overall did suck. Sure the gameplay may have made up for it, but that doesn't mean the story is cut out of the equation.

[Ming Ming Hatsune]

The game was too easy with a short boring story. If you were playing anything but the PC version, playing classic on 30fps is an eyesore. Generations is a good game, but even I had better fun in Unleashed than Generations. And I loathe that Werehog.

Who honestly gives a fuck about the story? The game was great. What else do you need?

Mehhhh, not really. It's certainly better than Wiileashed, BK and SR that's for sure. Unlike you, what makes me enjoy the games even more is the story. I play most games because of their stories. If they have a crappy story, I'll question of buying the sequel even if the gameplay was good. inFamous had good gameplay, but I didn't like the story and that's why I never touched the sequel. I don't think I ever will unless it becomes a free game.

[Diogenes]

Nobody cares when Rayman Origins disregards everything about Rayman.

Nobody cares when Mario does whatever the fuck.

As Soon as Sonic goes "Fuck it we're just going to make a game this time", people bitch.

You're just searching for things to complain about now.

Sonic games have aimed for more in-depth stories than Mario since at least S3&K. And since they're still making cutscenes, still paying for writers and full voice acting, still keeping around a large recurring cast, they should fucking use them instead of halfassing it and waiting for people to swoop in and defend them.

[azoo]

I'm sorry, but the gameplay was good and the story was bad, and no the gameplay doesn't make up for that. Like Nepenthe said, you guys treat it as if the gameplay being good overtrumps everything just because it's a video game. But I can't look at a game with terrible music and a terrible art style and say that the game is still brilliant even with that can I? No! Same applies here. Its a flaw in the game. Good things are good, bad things are bad. You just come to accept that.

You people act like as a professional game developer studio that Sonic Team is, all they do is build gameplay. They have 100+ people in their current crew that covers everything in every category. They should be more than capable to build a high quality story as well as high quality gameplay, not even to mention the art and music departments.

Edited October 27, 2012 by Azukara

[Vertekins]

God forbid you actually want to get fully invested in a game beyond it's gameplay

I play Sonic for more than just gameplay and whilst Generations' gameplay was great, the game has no real semblance of soul regarding the story. It's composed of a few masterfully-rendered stages in a white void completely devoid of character or life, basically the complete opposite of Unleashed. It completely squanders the cast, has quite a few plotholes and it's story is so uninvolved I'd say it's silly to expect me to have any real investment in it.

I, quite rightfully, expect better. Sonic Team, over many years, have presented to me a plethora of characters whose characterization and actions actually got me interested in the series. They've shown that they're capable of writing stories of the Storybook series' caliber and are also capable of making games with an immense degree of lavish attention devoted to developing the world the games are set in. So when games like Generations come along that nail one thing and not the other, it feels so arse-backwards, it's the very essence of taking two steps forwards and two steps backwards.

Gameplay is no excuse for non-existent story and chaarcterization.

[Carbo]

Sonic Generations is a game that only served to show that Sonic Team has no fucking idea what they're doing with the series.

It was fun playing. It still is sort of fun playing a few stages with increments. But contextually it's spreading bits and pieces of imperfect and worn out formulas, assembling them into a thinly spread contextual mess that plays less like a celebration of a franchise and more like trying to appease it's base. It feels like the developers either didn't pre-plan this game enough - or they take solace in a comfort area believing that these last few years didn't matter.

Sonic 06, Secret Rings and Black Knight made me annoyed. Unleashed made me frustrated. Colors felt like it was repentance for that, but with Generations it's finally just worn me out. Despite having fun with the game, the two hours it lasted, it stings how the game's final act left a sour taste in my mouth. It also made me realize that Sonic Generations is probably the game that's finally made me tired of Sonic.

Also on the subject of story; a story is not necessarily what defines a game's universe or draws appeal. Context on the other hand, is. This is something Sonic has been lacking massively since the Genesis days, and it's something that's still prevalent with pretty much all games except maybe possibly Colors because of how massively scaled down it was. Generations is probably the biggest offender of a lacking context and this isn't just because of it's lack of a big story - it's because of how a gigantic mess of a game it is. Despite the Genesis games having a story that people still hold high regards of, it's story really, really didn't mean much either. It was the subtle weaving of context, the melding adventure that created a continuity and solid streak of adventure. Speak more through the game play rather than the cutscenes. They have their place, but use them responsibly.