Bastard Hard Moments in Sonic

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

Haha so you hated Chip (who didn't affect the gameplay until the final boss) over the werehog system that could have been easily replaced by Knuckles?

And likely fail even worse in the process as the levels were specifically designed for the werehog and ONLY the werehog.

If you replace him with Knuckles, you have to completely rearrange every level so he can work.

[Unholy Sonic]

And likely fail even worse in the process as the levels were specifically designed for the werehog and ONLY the werehog.

If you replace him with Knuckles, you have to completely rearrange every level so he can work.

Fine by me, I can wait a few more months until I get a game that will work properly with the right character so that the game will be even more enjoyable & fun that it was trying to be.

The day stage were fun, the night stage were at the limit, the main problems were those ugly missions where you had to be way too careful to only complete them not matter what the ranking was.

Just having to play as Knuckles alone will satisfy me, so rebuilding the stages from scratch for a better gaming experience will be even better.

I was playing the Wii version, I dunno if it was easier or harder then the 360 version but I had quite a few hard times at it.

What was a relief tho compare to the 360, is that I never had any titan complex or QTE failures (since there was any then fighting).

[Chooch]

Dark. Gaia. Phase. One.

That boss fight was seriously the worst thing about Sonic Unleashed.

You can talk as much shit as you want about Werehog, playing as Gaia Colossus was legitimately the worst thing in that game to me. I was already in a shitty mood after dealing with Eggmanland (although my mood improved a little fighting Egg Dragoon as Werehog), but that just made things so much worse. Soooo much worse. I had to put down the controller and stop playing for nearly half an hour before I was calm enough to continue again it was so bad. Oh, and how can I forget the dialogue:

Chip: Dark Gaia's getting ready to do something!!

Sonic: Hang tight, Chip!

Chip: HURRY SONIC!!!!

Shut the fuck up you annoying little piece of shit.

[Sean]

If they're going to give Knuckles some spotlight time, they're going to have to do without the beat-'em-up gameplay. The Werehog's gameplay is counter-intuitive to everything a Sonic game promises: it forces you to stop in your tracks for several minutes in order to dispatch a slew of enemies that you can't avoid and take far too many hits, enemies that could have been defeated by Sonic alone in a single hit. The levels themselves are much more difficult than they should be because of the less-than-responsive controls. And Knuckles is perfectly capable of plowing through entire stone walls by simply running. So Knuckles isn't really suited for Werehog gameplay in any sense. You might as well stick him in Sonic's levels, which in turn would diminish his special abilities, in the same way that Sonic Advance 2 did for most of the characters.

[JezMM]

Has anyone said this yet. Because to this day I cannot get this to work, regardless as to if I use a game gear or a port.

Sonic 2 Game Gear: Trying to fly the handglider... for more than 2 seconds.

Tap left to ascend, touch nothing to descend slowly, tap right to descend sharply. Simple as that. If you want to keep going in a straight line (more or less) you just have to tap left in a steady rhythm.

Most people think it's more complicated and mash random directions, or fly straight to the ground in a panic as they hold left or right in an attempt to go that way on-screen.

I do love how infamous the hang glider is though. On Sonic Gems they include detailed control instructions among the unlockable hints and cheats for the game, lol.

Edited December 10, 2010 by JezMM

[w00tkins]

Never understood how someone could get so angry that they'd actually throw their controller.

Anyway, two examples of difficulty come to mind

Security Hall:

"Five minutes should be plenty!"

Needless to say, five minutes was NOT plenty. It was challenging but also fun too. The music helps : D

Eggmanland

Oh this one's difficult sure. We all know this. And it gets easier the more you do it. But can you do it WITHOUT DYING?

Yes, those goddamn hotdog missions. Seriously, going through a level that long is brutal. And then if you die you have to START ALL OVER AGAIN. AAAAAARGH

[Hybrid]

Sonic Adventure 2 Treasure Hunting levels and Eggmanland are the only things I had some trouble with

[Octarine]

The only instance I can recall of a Sonic game throwing something at me that I could never, ever beat was one of the missions from Rush Adventure. It was Haunted Ship Act 2's reach-the-goal-within-the-time-limit mission, or possibly Sky Babylon Act 2's. It might've been both of them, actually... I don't completely remember, and I can't check because I've lost the game. It was definitely irritating, which was a bit of a curveball coming from the usually pretty easy Rush Adventure.

On that note, what was the reward for completing all of Rush Adventure's missions?

[Vertekins]

On that note, what was the reward for completing all of Rush Adventure's missions?

An incredibly crappy and vaguely disturbing Sonic statue sticking out of the side of Southern Island's volcano

Regarding SRA, I found the "Collect the flags in order" missions pretty hard. And collecting the Wisps in order in Asteroid Coaster's Omega mission in DS Colours can be very annoying.

[Sean]

S-ranking everything in SRA has an effect of making the missions incredibly simple to accomplish. So I guess it just comes down to having to pick your poison.

[Semi-colon e]

The Rush Adventure missions are just a case of knowing the levels really well and S ranking all the main levels (not hard imo).

Some of the Colours missions, however, are fucking irritating. Especially trying to find the red coins and worse still S ranking them - many are nigh impossible to S rank. Did anyone else think Aquarium Park was the only easy to S rank stage in the entire game? You can fuck up throughout the level and still S rank without much difficulty. The missions aren't too bad either. I think it's just the best designed level in the DS Sonic Colours by far.

Asteroid Coaster in general was annoying with it's REALLY cheap level design, not impossibly hard though (but the collect the wisps mission took me MANY tries and I can't S rank it for shit).

[Glenn]

With Sonic Colours in the DS cartridge slot and Sonic the Hedgehog Genesis in the GameBoy Advance cartridge slot, I've been dividing my time between the two lately and seriously... hunting red rings? Side missions? Trying for S-Ranks? They're tasks akin to videogame Shakespeare.

I finally completed Genesis, after much swearing and dozens of restarts, the other night. What amused me the most is that it made Final Zone almost impossible. The widescreen picture format of the GameBoy Advance chopped off the top of the screen, meaning it also chopped off the top two capsules which Dr. Eggman uses to try and crush you. It rendered the tactics of fighting the boss absolutely useless, and leaves you standing at the side, hoping that your nemesis will appear in a capsule close to you. Both stupidly retarded and insanely dull. My final time for clearing Final Zone was something like six minutes, and yet because of the random nature of Eggman's attacks, it could be anything from thirty seconds to a timeout.

Therefore, I'll stand by a previous post and confirm that Sonic the Hedgehog Genesis, all of it, is bastard hard.

[Ultra_Gizmo_64]

All of Eggmanland.

[Chaocontrol6]

Oh my lord Sonic the Hedgehog 3's Carnival Night Zone Act 2!!! I tried this when I were knee high to a grasshopper (making me sound old when I am not, but a bloody long time ago) But there were these platforms I got majorly stuck on:

And the only way you could pass one specific one was by using Up and Down to move them so harshly that you could hop forward when it forced so far down. For me I kept thinking that you had to jump on it higher and higher in order to get there, or do it as Super Sonic or something for years on end and just could not make it, meaning I kept getting to the same dead end and dying after the classical 10 minute time-limit. Lovely.

It wasn't until the interwebz showed me how to do it so many years later and I finally did it on Sonic Mega Collection Plus on the PS2. Ooooh deary me >.<

[Blue Blood]

Egg Emperor. Doesn't matter who you are, it's just a nasty boss cause it's unfair. He'll attack you when you have no control so you fly off the ledge and die. It'd be great if he was genuinely challenging, but he's not. It's cheap shots and instant-death. Fuck, this should be about Heroes in general.

lol bottomless pit you die

Good Lord my typing is even worse than usual late at night.

Edited December 17, 2010 by Blue Blood

[Mystwalker]

Right now, I'm having weird trouble S-Ranking Tropical Resort Act 1 in Sonic Colours Wii, when I already attained 29 S-Ranks all over the place. It seems the game really wants me to get ALL 5 Red Rings plus use Laser and Drill Wisps aplenty. Thing is, I frequently forget to check for the Red Ring hidden in the small dirt box with 3 mines in them... >_>

I could just Drill Wisp abuse and reach the goal in time, but myeh...

Other things I recall:

- S3&K's Special Stages. This wouldn't be a problem if my most remarkable S3&K experience came from Sonic Jam's lie-inducing "Normal" mode. I grew used to the lack of speed up midway through the stage, so when I tried out a ROM during my Sonic Cage Dome days... oh my at the disaster!

- Sonic 3D's Volcano Valley zone. While I never really found Sonic 3D to be hard, it changes when I talk about Volcano Valley. It was a tad tricky without a Fire Shield, and there's nothing worse than letting your collected Flickies go loose over a lava pool. Getting out of such place with all of the Flickies back in possession is a very frustrating task... darn, I'd be happy if I even had any Rings left when I finally do it!

- Speaking of Sonic Jam... same thing with Sonic 2's Death Egg zone. Said Normal mode there gives you Rings in between boss fights, which made the whole deal much easier. When I had to play the original in a ROM file, the difference was way too critical and unforgiving. Really, it's not cool to deliberately kill a level's difficulty while people think it's the correct one!

- Yellow Spring Acts in Sonic Colours Wii. By the time I meet these I'm so used to freely jump and run around that I see myself deliberately burning lives out of sheer stupidity just to try to speed or spice up the level a bit. Not Bastard Hard, but Really Big Nuisance...

- More of a joke one, but getting a CPU-controlled Super Sonic finish 4th or lower in Sonic R. Only happened once in Radical City, with me using Tails Doll, and I'm still not sure how that happened. Tried to replicate such thing over and over again, but to no avail (yeah, I used to burn time like this when I was younger).

- Sonic Battle in general. It's been quite a while, but I remember playing through the thing on emulator relying mostly on CPU quirks and exploits in order to hit the opponents without being hit back, mostly circling around waiting for an opening. And if I didn't found out that the final Emerl boss is a total dummy to Sonic's long range Ground attack I probably would have never cleared the game's story. Overall a bit dull for a party fighting game.

That's all I can think off. I could include the Special Rings and Chao searches on Advance 2 and 3 respectively, but I found the search in both cases to be more of a fun sidequest than a problem, even when some Chao and a Ring or two were tough to find back when I remember doing this for the first time.

Edited December 17, 2010 by MickX

[Phos]

Dark Gaia is one of the worst bosses in any game I've ever played. Being ill conceived, poorly designed, and shoddily implemented wasn't enough, they (unintentionally?) exploited many psychological effects to make this a monumentally poor experience. Technical issues lead to inconsistent feedback for your actions and thus a poor understanding of the rules, voices telling you to do what you are already doing break your focus, and many of the visual effects used over the course of this fight breed apathy towards concentrating. It truely is transcendently bad.

This is in contrast to, say, Ninja Gaiden (NES), which almost seems to have been designed from the ground up to make the player better at video games in a surprisingly unfrusturating manner.

[Semi-colon e]

Sonic 4's final boss gave me a lot of grief last night - but unlike most of the game, it was mostly fair! Aside from the desperation attack, a little more time window when he landed would have been nice.

But like even Lost Labyrinth's "figure out where the attack comes or you get squished" or the Mad Gear's Sonic Advance 2 like running but then once you lose your rings they're offscreen bullshit were hard for all the wrong reasons.

Or the random bottomless pits right at the end of levels. Or that tiny little spikey bit in the second LL3 water room which I thankfully only died once to.

Sonic 4 annoyed me a hell of a lot as you can see. Most of it's problems are attributed to poor controls imo. Pinball physics be damned (Why is it called pinball anyway? It has nothing to do with pinball), my main problem was Sonic's stiffness, especially when letting go accidentally and stopping instantly, which made the game pretty hard.

[Scar]

Dark Gaia is one of the worst bosses in any game I've ever played. Being ill conceived, poorly designed, and shoddily implemented wasn't enough, they (unintentionally?) exploited many psychological effects to make this a monumentally poor experience. Technical issues lead to inconsistent feedback for your actions and thus a poor understanding of the rules, voices telling you to do what you are already doing break your focus, and many of the visual effects used over the course of this fight breed apathy towards concentrating. It truely is transcendently bad.

This is in contrast to, say, Ninja Gaiden (NES), which almost seems to have been designed from the ground up to make the player better at video games in a surprisingly unfrusturating manner.

[Saint Nathan]

Dark Gaia is one of the worst bosses in any game I've ever played. Being ill conceived, poorly designed, and shoddily implemented wasn't enough, they (unintentionally?) exploited many psychological effects to make this a monumentally poor experience. Technical issues lead to inconsistent feedback for your actions and thus a poor understanding of the rules, voices telling you to do what you are already doing break your focus, and many of the visual effects used over the course of this fight breed apathy towards concentrating. It truely is transcendently bad.

Yeah. I don't know what they were thinking.

With like, any of it.

The Wii version is boring and the Super Sonic fight is stupidly difficult, but the HD version is bullshit and the Super Sonic fight is easy and then a QTE.

They got the feeling of "ooohhhfuck i'm taking this asshole down" really well in terms of atmosphere in both, but it would have been so much better if they went straight from Egg Dragoon to Super Sonic.