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So, we have a GOTY topic and it made me think. What are the worst games I've played this year? So, I made this topic for the discussion of your WGOTY in 2013. Now, a little ground rule before we start. Avoid drama, please. We're all mature people here, we should be able to accept the fact that we all have different opinions. This cuts both ways, however, as you should have 'vaild' reasons on why you think the games you've listed are worthy of this title. By valid, I do mean no "I hate it because Sonic sucks now", rather "I don't like how Sonic controls in this title". (Apologies if this comes across as backseat moderating) Have fun!

DING DING DING Sonic the Hedgehog has had a hell of a lot of different styles and directions. Being around for twenty goddamn years probably helped that along. Some directions were good, some not so much. Some made us want to rip our hair out. For the next few weeks mad uncle Joker proposes a game, choose which Sonic games got what styles right, and which... didn't, and do tell us why. This game will work just as Soniman's legendary Sonic Unleashed vs. Sonic Colors topic did, but with more explosions! RULEZ -Have fun. -Don't feed them after midnight. -Pick a group of Sonic games listed by yours truly and tell the world why its the best at what it does! -Try to respect others' opinions on the topic. But I don't need to tell you that! -give me some money Without further *Apu*, let's get this show on the road! Story Let us start on a bombshell, eh? Sonic isn't exactly renowned for stories of high-quality, but dammit if there isn't a few golden nuggets in there. The series seems to follow a couple of specific patterns for story, now which do you prefer? Style 1: Grand Epic Adventures (Sonic Adventure (duh), '06, Unleashed) This kind of Sonic story involves a big-ass scope and a lot of balls. Be it Eggman blowing up the planet, blowing up a city or blowing up the moon, he's blowing something up and he's being assisted by the God of something or other. Basically, there's a high emphasis on Gods, time and space as we know it, and a LOT of new characters, be they a mass of NPCs or new furballs to play with. Focus is shared between Sonic and the others with no specific spotlight character. Cutscenes are many, drama is high, cheese is... plentiful. Characters die, learn things, are reset to their previous flanderizations so they go through them again... or all three. Style 2 - Character over Story (Classics) These games may lack the Cutscenes and scope of their successors, but they sure as hell tell a story. The bright, colorful characters, the mysterious level quirks, you name it. Essentially they tell a silent story through means other than Cutscenes. Style 3 - Characterization comes first! (Heroes, Colors, Lost World) Not a lot of actual things happen. The emphasis is clearly on bringing characters to life. Exactly by how much is up for debate. Cutscenes are few, plots are thin, but hey, they're entertaining. I've probably said enough. So now, I hand over to you, the little people, for a week of fun, mischief, and uh... yeah. Until next Sunday, the dawn of round 2, Let The Games Begin! Joker out.

Every Week, Sonic and his friends seem to battle Eggman's evil plans of taking over the world. But ever since Sonic Adventure, Sonic Team seems to have taken a liking to Giant God-Like Monsters that will never be mentioned ever again after said certain game. This is what the fanbase has called "MoTW" or "Monster of The Week". Appearing in almost every single 3D Sonic game sans Colors, Demi-powered monsters often turn out to be the (often mediocre) final boss of the game. So let's look at each MoTW's backstory, lead up, and battle itself, and just see who's the worst, and best Monster once and for all, (till the next game). Perfect Chaos (Adventure) Perfect Chaos is the first of these Monster's, and is arguably the best one. An entity within the Master Emeralds, Chaos was filled with rage and fury upon the Echidna Tribe's actions upon their siege on the Shrine, killing the Chao he protected and hurting his friend Tikal. It was that very incident that ended with Chaos and Tikal trapped within the Master Emerald. Some Hundred Years later, Eggman reads upon the stone tablets that he presumably rented from the library, and uses this to destroy the Master Emerald, and feeds the chaos emeralds to Chaos while the others must stop him from doing this, which they fail upon (hilariously I might add). Getting to the battle, Perfect Chaos just sits there while shooting lasers and summoning tornadoes and such. Though he never once tries to use a tidal wave attack ( D:), most of them are extremely easy to dodge, and as such he is no threat when being taken down by Super Sonic. Final Hazard (Adventure 2) Why is there a canon stuck up my ass AAAHHH!!! Final Hazard's backstory is.....weird. He the prototype of the ultimate life-form, (how they went from a colossal dinosaur type freak to a little black hedgehog is beyond me), somehow being re-awoken when the chaos emeralds where put into the Space Ark canon's core. He fights Shadow for a bit before Chaos Controlling into outerspace and sticking his ass into....a giant canon. Yeah........ The fight is mostly easy, though can be frustrating at times. He shoots lasers at you, fires up tiny pink homing things, and has a huge pimple problem as big as a "fuck me button". Yep, strange and......strange. (So if the canon fired, would he blow up, or would the laser come out his......moving on!) Metal Overlord (Heroes) Metal Sonic being a final boss is awesome, if it weren't for the fact that he pretty much goes apeshit and turns into a dragon-robot hybrid anime type. Also it's around this time Sonic fans begin to notice a pattern in final bosses being big, and huge, and monster like. Anyways, Metal Sonic was pissed at Sonic and Eggman, so he locks up the latter, and disguises himself as Sonic before kidnapping Cheese and Froggy for his masterplan!!!!Quite the genius really. He then goes out as Eggman and lures the Sonic Heroes into his trap....being something. So yep, he kidnaps a frog and an animal, tells everyone what he's doing, and when he going to do it, fights everyone and fucks up, before transforming before everyone to show that his true plan all along was to kill Sonic. Quite a Complex plan just for killing one hedgehog. Why is this guy popular again? Oh yeah, cause he's EVIL!!!!! Metal Son- oh excuse me, Overlord, shoots crystals out of his chest, and slows down time (where he doesn't use this to his advantage,) and occasionally grabs random Egg-Fleet ships and throws them like a badass at Super Sonic. This sounds all cool and shit, but it's really easy and mediocre. Plus the way Super Sonic and his friends show him the power of teamwork by shaking violently before raping Metal is very hilarious. Devil Doom (Shadow) OH THANK GOD, I have an excuse for not explaining this boss's backstory, Ahem, since this is not a Sonic game all the way (even though it is), I will not explain this boss's complex, confusing, weird, backstory that even I'm not sure about. Hell it's been so long since I played this shit that I forgot everything. Something about DNA, and Black Arms, and he is Shadow's father or some shit, wanna explain? Be my guest! The Battle as far as I remember is easy. He uses lasers (RED LASERS) and throws comets at Shadow above the stratosphere. Also he can use Chaos Control, though it doesn't really come into affect here. Boss sucks, Game sucks, Devil Doom can kiss my devilishly sexy ass. Next-oh god no, Solaris (Sonic The Disaster) Lol, only Newfags Tri-Force. Speaking of this Newfag, here's Solaris. He was created as Iblis, along with Mephiles the Dark, when the scientists of Soleana were trying to do shit. But Shit went wrong, and they both escaped. Luckily thanks to the plot excuse and plot irrelevance of Shadow and Silver, they captured them and Mephiles was sealed inside the book scepter of darkness. Iblis on the other hand, was sealed within an 8 YEAR OLD GIRL with SOCIAL PROBLEMS, who would awaken WHENEVER SHE CRIED, on the same day HER FATHER DIED. BRILLIANT! But *Gasp* the unthinkable happens, as she cries one day, and Iblis is released and fused with Mephiles, to create Solaris Paradox, Lord of the Time Stream. The Battle is boring. You charge up as whoever you are, while Solaris throws too much random shit at the screen, while using LASERS, too keep the hedgehog trio at bay. You can see how well that worked out. Perfect Dark Gaia (Unleashed) Once again, just as the stone tablets predicted, Eggman unleashes yet another Monster of the week. Dark Gaia is the dark, evil entity of the Earth, while Light Gaia is the pure and light. Both are awaken every couple of thousand years to fight and begin Armageddon, but this time Dark Gaia was awaken a couple hundred years too early. As such, Light Gaia and him were premature and are both unable to fight each other yet. Also the Chaos Emeralds power up the Temples or some shit, because they do. So yeah, Perfect Dark Gaia can create a giant force field to protect himself, grabs Light Gaia, and does a round of Punch-Out against him. Oh and Super Sonic goes through his skull like a boss. This boss is boring, tedious, long, and just repetitive. Grab your X-Box 360 controllers and PRESS X 60 TIMES to continue to the latest MoTW. Time Eater (Generations) Time Eater appears out of random. Nothing is known about his backstory, as he just randomly shows up in space just as Eggman was passing him. Plot excuse to use time travel in Generation yes, but still I like to have the story in my Sonic games not so....irrelevant. Oh and I'll put some spoiler warnings later on so you guys don't find out that Robotnik and Eggman are controlling him. The battle is horrendous too. He throws random stuff at you from Sonic's past, all his green-eyed failures and black-eyed successes, and shoots HOMING SHOTS AT YOU. JUST WANTED TO LET YOU KNOW, THAT'S MIGHT BE A HOMING SHOT, I'M NOT SO SURE BUT JUST IN CASE, THAT LOOKS LIKE some dumb annoying shit. And he can stop time...and doesn't do anything when he does this. Also he has a giant Death Ball that does nothing against Sonic. Likes :Time, Eating, Fat People, Plot Holes Dislikes: Red Chaos Emeralds, Plot, Story, Sonic, Being called Robotnik. All of these Monsters range from good, to bad, to horrendous, to mediocre. So I ask, which do you think is deserving of the Grammy for Best MoTW, and why and shit. Oh and this is also a general topic for MoTW, why you hate them, blah blah blah, backstory and such.

So, the topic is: Are you happy with the direction of the series? You can talk about anything: Story direction, gameplay direction, art direction, anything that has to do with the overall direction of the series! Here's my two red rings. I'm very happy with the series's direction right now! I love Modern gameplay, and I want them to keep on improving it (hopefully improving controls and adding more momentum-based level design). The one thing I can really complain about in recent game is the story. I was fine with Colour's approach for a ONE TIME change of pace (lol), but I don't want it to happen again, and I was quite disappointed in Generation's story. I want stories more in the tone and detail level of SA1 or Unleashed to come back, with better dialogue writing hopefully. Thoughts?

So this topic is about the Adventure games. Many people consider them the best 3d games, and some people consider them the best Sonic games ever. But an equal number of people find them mediocre or hate them. So what do you think of Sonic's first two 3d titles? Here's my thoughts. I LOVE SA1. It's my second favourite 3d Sonic game. The alternate playstyles were the least offensive in that game because most of the characters were almost as fast as Sonic and/or played like a Sonic character (Except BIG THE FUCKING CAT), and the level design (For everyone except Big) was awesome, quite open and gave a sense of freedom. Sure the controls were not good at high speeds but I still love this game. The art style was also great, bringing some realism while still giving off that Sonic feel, and the story, while it suffered from bad writing, was still very good, and expanded on some of the Sonic mythos. If I had to score it, sure it's showing it's age but I'd say 8.5 out of ten. Now SA2. I love this game but not as much as SA1. The speed stages were still very fun, but they got more linear. The mech stages I like, as I did in SA1, but Tails was far better in SA1 because he was on his feet and the mech does not fit his playstyle. However, the mech stages fit perfectly for Eggman! I liked about a quarter of the hunting stages, but some of them just get obsessively big, and SEGA made the stupid decision of gimping the radar too! So overall, the alternate playstyles were more offensive in this game. The art style leaned too far towards realism, with there being only a few levels that felt Sonic-y. The story was as awesome as SA1's. It did not expand on the mythos as much, but overall it's a better told story to make up for it, and I LOVE Shadow in this game. Overall, it's great, but not as much as SA1, so I'd give it a 7/10.

So this topic is about Sky Sanctuary in Generations. What you thought of it, it's level design, the music, anything! It's another one of those topics. I love both sides, Classic and Modern, but I will break them down and do each one individually. CLASSIC Great stage with lots of cool level gimmicks returning. I liked the 3d spinning spike/Item/spring wheels, giving the 2d gameplay 3d depth in it's obstacles. Music is great, and quite similar to the original. I feel the white and plant life look better then the yellow for a temple sanctuary (Which SS is), so I think it looks far better then the original stage. MODERN What can I say, I LOVE this stage! Second favorite modern stage in the game, only beaten by modern SSH. SO many alternate paths and platforming, and it was very expansive! The paths were constantly intertwining as well. And the music....well..it was just amazing. And the Uber BOOOOSSHHH version! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_j-WdO6BRA So yeah. What more can I say? Both are amazing stages! Thoughts?

Think of this as the inverse of Mechano's topic, we all love our favorite characters to death and probably prioritize them over anyone else, but we'd be fooling ourselves into thinking they're perfect as even they have traits or have done things that just downright piss us off. So let's see what we can find in our favorite characters that we don't like. I'll start. Sonic: As much as I love Sonic as a character, he sometimes comes off as way too pure and goody, goody Not that those are terrible traits per se, but it kind of irks me when Sonic is presented as this holy avatar who can do no wrong and do anything by himself. The new direction of the games aren't helping with the Sonic only policy. Shadow: His attempts at being "cool" and "edgy", I mean I understand he's supposed to be that type of character but most of it amounts to folding his arms, and saying "hmmph" which are barely cool and seem like a stupid forced attempt at it. He seems to switch moods with every game too; One minute he's willing to help Sonic, next he's being a jerk towards, etc, etc. Are you a Hero or Anti-Hero? Pick one and stick with it. Knuckles: His gullibility is getting annoying now, it started out as a quirky trait of his before becoming his most dominant trait and eclipsing his entire character. He's treated as a joke character despite technically having one of, if not the second most important job after Sonic's hero status and he's rarely if at all taken seriously. He's pointless and stupid comic relief at this point.

Fun Fact: Sonic Heroes is the result of a...somewhat forced job. Originally, Sega was gonna release this on the Gamecube/Xbox only, with a special engine that didn't work on the PS2. Things were going smoothly, until Sony told Sega to either make Sonic Heroes for PS2 also, or never make a sonic game on their system ever again. Of course Sega had no choice but to rewrite the engine, and most of the game, and well.....the result is this. Now This is game is pretty special in it's own way, it introduced alot of cool concepts and gameplay, but it also has alot of flak for being...repetitive. So let's go down the list and see how good and bad this game was. First of all the Story. Sonic Adventure 1 & 2 both had deep engrossing stories, so people expected Heroes to follow. However, Heroes did something different, not only did it bring the story back to the concepts of the classic games. "Eggman taking over world, Stop Eggman" was the basis for Sonic Team, but it also lightened of the story, something that had pleased many Sonic fans back then. See, here's how the story went down, "Eggman trying to take over the world, so Sonic Team (Sonic Tails & Knuckles) are all trying to stop him from doing so. But in the meantime, Rouge finds Shadow (who...well let's save that for the Shadow the Hedgehog Appreciation Topic) and Omega, and is trying to track down Eggman to find the truth. Meanwhile, Cream's other Chao & Big's Froggy have been kidnapped by what appears to be Sonic. So Amy (Not missing up a chance to chase Sonic) teams up with them to track down Sonic Team. And Finally, Team Chaotix (Vector, Charmy, and Espio...who the fuck is Mighty?) get hired by an unknown person to do a set of mission for him, in order for a large amount of pay." While not engrossing, it works for a Sonic game, while eventually tying all the plots together, and soon you'll realize that Eggman perhaps may not be the true villian here...Overall, it's a good story that doesn't give us that much, but is enough considering the type of game this is. Strange isn't it?!? But now let's move towards the Characters. Let's see now, 1,2...3...Holy fuck that's alot of Characters! That's right, the entire Sonic Cast is here, Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, Shadow, Rouge, Omega, Amy, Big, Cream, Vector, Espio, and Charmy... Each of these characters are broken up into four 3-man teams. Consisting of Team Sonic, Dark, Rose, & Chaotix. Even though you technically have 12 playable characters, it really only feels like 3. There;s not that much that differentiates the character's abilities between other teams outside of Speed, Power, & Flight. The only difference is truly, are the appearances, and Team Powers. Oh that's right, I almost forgot about Abilities. Well the Speed folk can mainly run fast and do "dashes? Rolling? Spin Dash? I don't even know what to call it.". Power type are the slowest, but the best for plowing through enemies and stage obstacles, and Flight is to...well....fly. Also you can do a Thunder shoot, which lets you shoot your two teammates at enemies. But the ones you care about the most, are the Team Power moves. Each Team has a different "superpower" Sonic Team will shoot Sonic all around the screen like a ragdoll, Team Dark will freeze time and literally Obliterate every single enemy on screen. Rose will destroy every enemy on screen, and give you invincibility. And Finally Chaotix will show you how to rock! They all mainly have the same actions, and are a nice way to kill enemies when you just don't have the time to do so. But enough about this, let's move on to "LEVELS" I won't go into detail here, but most of the levels are quite fun to go through. Once again, taking from the classic, almost each level has a different "gimmick" to it. Weather you're racing in speed carts, cannon hopping from different turtles, manipulating gravity on castles, or destroying an Air Fleet, you're almost guaranteed to have a blast playing through at least one of these levels. Sure there's some flawed levels (You all know what I'm talking about), but it doesn't stop me from having fun in these big open spaced/linear stages. Some of the more memorable stages if you ask me. For Music, the game is still true to the Sonic Series. Weather you like the stage or not, you'll sometime find yourself humming the "Hang Castle" theme, or the "Final Fortress" theme from time to time. Not only that, but the final boss music is amazing, featuring Crush 40 at their prime. And who doesn't love the Sonic Heroes Theme? Overall, Is Sonic Heroes a flawed game? Yes. Is the levels reptive? Maybe. But is it fun? Hell Yes. I may not have had as much fun playing this as I have with Sonic Adventure 2, but I still come back from time to time in order to do another playthrough of the game. It has brought back alot of cool concepts as well, spanning from Act 1 & 2 stages, Special Stages, Eggman Boss Battles, and much more. This game may not be the best, or some might just hate it overall, but I'll tell you what does this game for me, and that's it's Uniqueness. for the first time, It feels like I'm playing a True 3D Sonic game, not a 3D game with Sonic in it. That's why I like this game, cause it's fast, blue, and way past cool man. AW YEAH! Let me show you just what I'm made of....NOW! DISCUSS, I demand thee to do so. (P.S., Sorry if this topic is lazy written, It's like 1am over here right now, so I'll fix any issues with this post in the morning.)