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Hyperman1992 posted:A bioware sonic game? This I have to see. People say that the Sonic Curse was gone when Sega made Sonic Unleashed and basically moved forward from there never stopping, but I don't believe that. I think the curse was just passed on to Bioware. Also there's some wonderful behind the scenes talk about the story and what legal drama's it's caused that I could get into but I'll hold off on it and just say this. This game is terrible. Horrid controls, slow, bad music, boring battles, bad writing. And you may be thinking "But it's Sonic, it always has bad writing" but that doesn't excuse it. You can write good sonic. Ask Tracey Yardley or Ian Flynn. So of course I nearly beat it, and was curious to see how it ended. Let this train roll.
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# ¿ Aug 20, 2013 15:09 |
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# ¿ Apr 18, 2024 00:05 |
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CatsPajamas posted:
No they didn't. The comics from pretty much the moment it stopped being a gagbook to 160 were pretty loving terrible. They've gotten good NOW, but make no mistake they were horrid beforehand. As for why they don't wanna acknowledge it, well we'll get to that when we get more into the story of this game, because it actually was influenced by a (very horrible) set of characters from the comic book. And said writer, who is both a hack and completely insane, tried to sue EA and Bioware, and by extention Sega, over what he viewed as "Copyright infringement" It isn't. He's a complete lunatic. But Sega would have a very good reason to want nothing from the comics and the regrettably poorly aged TV series to have anything to do with the product. That doesn't mean they shouldn't bring in the current comic writer because he accomplished the amazing goal of making Silver the Hedgehog a likable character that people like to see show up. Also Amy Rose. Onmi fucked around with this message at 15:58 on Aug 20, 2013 |
# ¿ Aug 20, 2013 15:55 |
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Graceful Graveler posted:I never managed to finish this game, even though I wanted to, but I can't really remember what the last straw was. If you're anything like me, it was the absurdly bullshit enemies the final area has.
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# ¿ Aug 20, 2013 16:13 |
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infinitycanvas posted:I think it's just driftwood, like a tree branch that washed up on shore, and the water effect is so lazy that the waves just render on-top of it, and then they coloured it blue for some reason. If your nice to Amy she'll reveal that she made Dexter up to get Sonic jealous and then he can accept her feelings sorta? I'm not spoiling that poo poo because "Dexter isn't real" is god drat obvious. Also there's something with Tails, that I wont go into, but again it's very minor.
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# ¿ Aug 20, 2013 17:48 |
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majormonotone posted:Aw yeah, I have a soft spot in my heart for this game, to the point where I was considering LPing it myself. But you're doing a better job than I could! Amy's backstory in Sonic CD, hell the entire reason she follows Sonic, is that she did a Card Reading and it said she would meet her true love if she went to the Little Planet, her stage in Sonic the Fighters is very Occult based as well.
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# ¿ Aug 20, 2013 18:23 |
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DarkHamsterlord posted:"Character is avoided by enemy attacks" Because Bioware and Lazy. You know I honestly think the concept of a Sonic RPG could work, if you did it right. I mean you've got the colourful cast of characters with all their unique bullshit power, equips and styles. You got a (seemingly ever-changing) world full of colourful locals, you have a bunch of villains to use (Eggman, Battle Birds, a couple of factions from the comics). Get the right writer and set the right tone with the right battle system, and you have a good game. The problem with this game is it got all of those things wrong.
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# ¿ Aug 21, 2013 07:03 |
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Hobgoblin2099 posted:Wasn't that what Sonic Battle was? Not really, but it's better written than this garbage.
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# ¿ Aug 21, 2013 08:05 |
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SirPhoebos posted:On that note, I hope this thread isn't taken over by the "gently caress BIOWARE!" folks on this subforum, because I really want to see what depths this game goes. Don't worry, all my problems with Chronicles are simply Chronicles. Like taking the absolute worst character group from the comic and adapting it into a game. The only way this could have been worse if they included the dragon with her abusive boyfriend.
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# ¿ Aug 21, 2013 14:47 |
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Fedule posted:This just raises more questions though. How did they get so late into development without waterproofing the legal side? What were they even using that would've been subject to legal issues in the first place? With Sonic Team's blessing they'd have had access to tons of great music and a whole team of awesome composers to make more. Or if Bioware were doing it in house with blessings of Sonic Team there'd have been nothing to have issues over. Okay, so as I remember it? Basically the composer for the game left like at the very tail end of development and Bioware decided to literally download music remixes from the internet for the game (Someone found that one city tune on OC Remix or some such... apparently. But to me the question is... why if you're going to download music to replace the soundtrack being gone, why not just grab Sonic music? why grab remixes?
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# ¿ Aug 21, 2013 16:00 |
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SuccinctAndPunchy posted:So, the composer left at the end and took absolutely all of the music with him? Like, they can do that and there's no ensuing wrath of loving god bearing down on their head from the entire rest of the crew the composer just screwed? I find that hard to believe. One specific piece of music is literally Snappleman's "Malicious Fingers" remix from the Project Chaos OCR album of "Doomsday zone" just... terribly made This is the music in Chronicles https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lrpglqYeQBc This is Malicious Fingers https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycSJZS5VJIo So this actually raises a question for me. Since clearly ones actually a well produced remix and the other is... that. Does this mean that Bioware didn't just download the remix. they did so, then produced a worse version of it?
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# ¿ Aug 21, 2013 16:20 |
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Artix posted:It's actually kind of funny that you mention that, because Mario RPG parallels this game a lot. They're both RPG adaptations of a beloved platformer (Well, for a given definition of beloved, considering when this came out for Sonic), developed by one of the biggest RPG houses at the time when both developers were at the top of their game (this would have been right after Mass Effect, with Mass Effect 2 and Dragon Age on the horizon). The difference, of course, is that Square I can confirm that Yoko Shimomura was the composer of Super Mario RPG. Who you probably know from stuff like Legend of Mana, Kingdom Hearts, Live a Live, Street Fighter II, The Mario and Luigi series, some tracks from Xenoblade, and upcoming titles like Final Fantasy XV.
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# ¿ Aug 21, 2013 16:32 |
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Cheez posted:No, no it's not. They used the original. Like if someone REALLY botched the conversion job in Sonic 1 for GBA. Instruments are missing, notes are missing, whatever happened, it's the exact same song as the original with big bites taken out of it and all the BEST instrument choices. Yes, yes it is. They aren't similar songs they are the same song. Not remixes of the same song that happen to sound similar, they are literally the same notes. If you got the sheet music they would be identical.
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# ¿ Aug 22, 2013 03:06 |
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SirPhoebos posted:I'm going to regret asking, but could you elaborate? Sure. The comics were loving stupid for the majority of their existence. Thus they had really stupid plots, characters, and everything under the sun. In this particular case Dulcy the Dragon (imported from SatAM, a nice reminder to people that the show has not aged well at all) got herself an abusive boyfriend named Zan, as said in the thread, who literally beat her. Leading to this excellent exchange of dialogue. "Zan loves me." "Then why does he hit you?" This is bad, but only a pair of characters. The villains of this game, the Marauders, are adapted from a group of characters who are the brain child of one Ken Penders, psychotic nutjob extraordinaire who's so far up his own rear end that oxygen has long since stopped flowing to his grey matter. Only feces remains to power this wonderful sack of poo poo. If I had to put it into a way for people to understand... you know how people have that mental image of "Sonic Fans", this guy is the physical representation of that. Except worse. I wont get into that now, since it does spoil the mystery behind the villains, but once we do I'm going to go into who they are, why they were terrible, and what sort of legal fuckery Sonic Chronicle caused due to them. The only thing more than the game itself, is all the drat drama that spun from it. This one game has caused Sega and Archie Comics to basically both be involved with a legal clusterfuck ever since it's release. Onmi fucked around with this message at 15:31 on Aug 22, 2013 |
# ¿ Aug 22, 2013 15:26 |
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CzarChasm posted:Is that the guy who claimed that pretty much every Sonic character created after Tails was his intellectual property? Not exactly, but pretty much that crazy. To put it into perspective. he claims that "Evil Sonic" is his own character and not a derivative work of Sonic the Hedgehog, as is "Robo-Robotnik." He literally claims "Original the Character, Do Not Steal." Again, I'll get into the depths of his insanity when the LP is far along enough that it's relevant. Just know for now that this game was more than just a mediocre-bad game.
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# ¿ Aug 22, 2013 18:22 |
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CatsPajamas posted:Because he was the chief editor on the Archie Sonic comics for a while, he thinks he owns everything that has to do with them (he doesn't understand how legal rights work). Also his guiding principle during his time as editor seemed to be "copy Marvel comics, but badly." He wasn't editor, just a writer.
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# ¿ Aug 22, 2013 19:46 |
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Wanamingo posted:Okay, I was really expecting the normal anthropomorphized Sonic characters and not whatever this is. Oh silly Wanamingo, the comics didn't have the non-sonic characters be in Sonic style. That would be silly and make too much sense.
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# ¿ Aug 24, 2013 06:33 |
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idonotlikepeas posted:Yeah, that part actually makes it worse. Amy isn't even his girlfriend, she's his stalker who goes around saying she's his girlfriend without his consent. While beating him up. See this is why the only time she's a good character these days is (surprisingly given that they gave every excuse to ditch her beforehand) the comic, where she's... well not a violent psychopathic stalker. Instead she's a violent psychopathic hero, who just so happens to have a crush on Sonic. I don't know why she's portrayed so terribly in everything else, scept the UK Comic which is no longer running. Ramos posted:It gets weirder. She was originally supposed to be eight years old when she first started chasing around Sonic in Sonic CD, who was fifteen. You know, in cartoon animal years. Apparently she magically became twelve in Sonic Adventure while Sonic stayed fifteen. Actually he was 18, then 16, now he's 15. he magically de-aged. Twice. Don't think too hard about Sonic 'ages' cause it will just give you a headache.
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# ¿ Aug 24, 2013 16:29 |
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SuccinctAndPunchy posted:Weirder still is the way one of the comics wrote around this slight timeline gently caress-up. Amy just apparently finds some weird magical plot-fixing artifact thing and uses it to magically age herself upwards because I forget the reason why. Said magical age-up also apparently giving her a completely new wardrobe. You know, because character redesigns. Well the people who had to write under that situation where Karl Bollers, an... okay? writer. He has some hits, lots of misses, very wordy. And Ken Penders. Who as we've covered is both a hack and insane. So if you feel sorry for them... don't! They probably deserved it.
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# ¿ Aug 24, 2013 16:40 |
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Geostomp posted:The comics do pretty well by all the characters, mostly because they actually treat them as individuals with their own goals rather than a collection of Sonic's hangers-on, even if it does tend to dip into soap-opera territory at times. Of course, this is all western stuff. The tired or bland portrayals are usually for the Japanese fans that, from what I've heard, do not like the "attitude" that Sonic was given in the west. I don't believe that, given that he's got plenty of attitude (although it's a very different source of attitude) than the comics. But yes the comics feel the need to not just make everyone Sonic's hanger-ons. There relationships are still there but it's not the sole character trait. Amy loves Sonic, but she also recognizes "He doesn't love me back" and instead is perfectly fine just being his friend and a hero, she just hopes that one day he'll come around. Now whether or not that characters extra stuff is good is entirely dependent. So long story short, nothing to do with Knuckles. Hell they even made me like Shadow and Silver. By making the former more rounded, and treating the latter like an idiot who's trying his best to do good. He's just trying so hard. Yet failing so bad.
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# ¿ Aug 27, 2013 15:34 |
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UmbreonMessiah posted:How bad is it that I recognize BOTH those characters despite not having read the comic in almost ten years? And what does it say about me that it just raises so many "what the gently caress?" questions? Actually the one on the left is new. The echidna(Echidna is a word Firefox) all just look alike., the one on the right thought, you recognize him. Long story short, turns out that having a world where the Ark got colony dropped and everything is on loving fire is NOT a world you want to rule even if you're immortal. So he's pretty much got it into his head to train Silver to do right and sort the whole "Everything is dead" Except every time Silver goes back, he fucks up, and screws up the future worse. AND he has to relearn all history because it's all changed while he's been gone. We actually skipped the 06 future (Canon status: Encyclopedia says it happened, then undid itself AND WE SHALL NEVER SPEAK OF IT AGAIN) so now everythings just a wasteland. And Silver is still a hapless idiot.
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# ¿ Aug 27, 2013 16:06 |
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Dr. Buttass posted:Aw man, I remember being really pumped for this game, and even enjoying it to a certain degree when I actually played it. Then again as a lifelong Sonic fan who'd just watched literally his first favorite anything hit absolute rock bottom I probably would have taken anything that was an improvement over that and said "gently caress yes this rules". That was mostly an excuse to not have to write her. Just like when she decided to go live with her cousin who's a king and- seriously a retcon to this world was not a bad thing. Anyway off comic talk, onto game talk. The thing that got me the most about this game is that it felt wrong. Now Sonic has this habit of just having the world feel wrong (Except for Unleashed, they somehow got the world so right in that game.) but in Chronicles it feels... Okay you know the Mario RPGs? Well when you play one it still feels distinctly Mario, it doesn't feel like they took Mario and dropped him in a new world. It feels like this here. And this is an apt summation of everything. It doesn't feel right at all. As I've said a Sonic RPG is completely plausible, it's got everything one would need but sadly no ones ever come along to properly capitalize on that. Also this game is utterly impossible to play on the move, inputting QTE drawings on the road is just...
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# ¿ Sep 15, 2013 07:55 |
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Kurui Reiten posted:One big problem: Ever since the Adventure games, apparently humans are the majority. Talking cartoon animals aren't seen as weird, but neither do they ever seem to show up other than Sonic's little group. There's the echidnas in Sonic Adventure, but poof, they're loving gone. The old games always implied that there were other humans, I mean who did you think was inhabiting all those cities in the backgrounds of stages like Casino Night? I mean you're utterly correct in it being weird as hell that the generic NPCs aren't Generic animal folk as well (though they obviously exist, Cream didn't suddenly start existing when they ran into her in Advanced, They must have had parents etc.) That being said, I can definitely say that the Marauders all distinctly feel different as a species rather than all just being "Hey we're all goats, so we share the exact same design minus tufts of hair", which is more than I can say for a certain writer/artist. And hell, they fit the Sega world, which again, is more than I can say for a certain writer/artist. The unofficial explanation seems to be "Don't sweat the small stuff." And as the general aesthetic of a world (and even the humans inhabiting it) I feel that Unleashed nailed it, since the humans felt like Eggman felt. Cartoony in HIS way. Not stock-standard anime or "Realistic"
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# ¿ Sep 15, 2013 10:42 |
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Cheez posted:When I played the Sonic games, I always assumed Robotnik/Eggman built all this poo poo like what you find in star light zone and the others for no reason other than to build it. I had no business assuming people existed when a guy is enslaving animals to make robots that populate all these areas that only seem to serve as defenses that stand between anyone and the guy who made it all happen. Really? not even once entertained that the cityscape in the background might be inhabited? Robotnik just an eccentric who builds who cities? You've got his motivation all wrong. It's the desire to make a theme park that fulfills two purposes 1. Stroke own ego 2. Hate that hedgehog. And yeah somewhere beyond that list is "Take over the world" but honestly that's like the means to the end. And the end result is a god drat theme park. Eggman in this game is... eh? I never really get a good read on him and the beginning of the game is just... not the kind of Eggman I like. Still no spoilers for any upcoming stuff he may do.
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# ¿ Sep 15, 2013 14:00 |
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Lizard Wizard posted:Also hilarious, yes. Ah yes, TheKKM. I remember him from the Sonic Comic Marathon, he did a lot of art like that, and a lot of redesigns, though most of them are focused on the lovely characters from the comic and not the game characters. His Rouge is very nice though. Wind God Sety posted:Isn't that more or less what they've done post-Sonic 2006? Pretty much. Really only Sonic, Tails and Amy have done anything post-2006, and Amy was really only in Unleashed. Which going by order of characters created, Knuckles would be the next one to properly add in since it goes Sonic, Tails, Amy, Knuckles. At least if we don't look at Mighty and Ray. Or Nack the Weasel/Fang the Sniper, Or the Chaotix in gener- Who thought it was only after the Classic series ended that Sonic got a bunch of friends again?! Also, Central City is a literal drat pain. While there's no places in the game the music is good that is a location where the game must go mute. Again this was still the beginning so I was holding out hopes. Hopes that at sometime this would magically morph into a good game.
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# ¿ Sep 23, 2013 08:23 |
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Glazius posted:I would not have figured to have Sonic be the guy with mostly combo skills and Tails with none. Really? Sonic would pretty much combo with everyone, being the main character and needing to be in the party. Like Crono.
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# ¿ Sep 23, 2013 09:22 |
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Geostomp posted:Blaze still has the Rush games for a backstory. Silver doesn't, but afaik he's just kind of around with Blaze now so we can still pretend very hard that 06 never happened. Silver is still "From the Future" it's just the future isn't a poo poo hole. he intends to keep it that way.
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# ¿ Sep 25, 2013 00:15 |
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Geostomp posted:At least we can take comfort in the fact that Big has been officially retired, so we're (hopefully) about as likely to see him again as we are to have a game starring Mighty, Ray, and Beak the Dynamite. He has? He was in Generations as a Trophy
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# ¿ Sep 29, 2013 20:05 |
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Hobgoblin2099 posted:Right. This is what I meant. "I'm from the future and incredibly incompetent. Please laugh at my antics of being the worst Time Detective." That's Silver in a nutshell.
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# ¿ Sep 30, 2013 08:12 |
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It really needs to be shown to the thread, it gets really... Bioware at the end there.
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# ¿ Oct 24, 2013 09:28 |
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SelenicMartian posted:Every option leads to hilariously animated sex? Not exactly, to be serious Sega does not want Sonic to be in a relationship, ever. So even the scene in this game is them reaffirming themselves as "Really good friends." So thankfully we get to avoid anything that would make the creepy fans drool. At the same time, it's still Bioware.
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# ¿ Oct 24, 2013 10:13 |
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Well, Lost World despite not having her appear a lot, did a lot for Amy personality-wise Also, on the "Great Civilization" stuff in the Codex, I'm fairly certain that was in the comic. And it was just as dumb there
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# ¿ Nov 7, 2013 09:21 |
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TwoPair posted:Hold up pardner, we'll get there. Oh I wasn't going to say anything about it, just that I believe it came from there.
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# ¿ Nov 7, 2013 11:07 |
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Oh Ian, you're always a wonderful person to have around for these things. And yes, Tales of Sonic would probably be the best way to handle an RPG for him. Out of curiosity would you write one, if Sega ever offered? Or is writing a video game something not figure into your busy scheduled of writing Sonic, Megaman, Sonic Universe, and New Crusaders, all of which can be brought from Archie comics for a reasonable price, along side various Trades and Archives Shameless Plug buy now.TheFattestPat posted:How about an arena battle with Mighty, Ray, Nack, and Tiara. The forgotten ones return to make a stand! Sonic is in no short amount for characters who could fill up the arena, act as secrets, participates in skits, serve as big bads etc. etc. Which is why it shocks me that Chronicles is... this.
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# ¿ Nov 23, 2013 10:12 |
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Man I have gotten all the way to the final dungeon and I seriously had blocked all of that from my mind.
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# ¿ Jan 1, 2014 02:46 |
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I'm sorry but even if you "Polished" this, the game is still a turd. The combat is unfun, the quests are boring, the game is slow and poorly controlled, and the story... well being better than your source material doesn't make it good. The characters are all somehow out of character despite this being Sonic, and the characters being the easiest thing in the world to grasp, The only person in character is Big the Cat because "Chill as gently caress Cat" is really impossible to screw up. They really are trying to push everyone into the typical bioware party mold and this is never more apparent until someone joins later. Ontop of the combat just being bad, it gets really tedious and painful by the end. You could polish this all you want but it doesn't change that the core systems behind it are poor.
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# ¿ Jan 1, 2014 09:49 |
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Dr. Buttass posted:Actually Big the Cat is one of the things pretty much everyone agrees Bioware improved, by making him entirely out of character. He's still a moron, but now he's funny about it. You literally just contradicted yourself. "Funny Moron" is not completely out of character for "Moron". It's the exact same character, because Big the Cats single definition is "I don't give a gently caress about anything but my frog" That is the one trait that defines Big, he will go through hell and high water for his loving frog and he cares jack poo poo about everything else. Also, I said Big the Cat was the one character actually IN character. They've all devolved into whatever groups Bioware can push them into, except for Big, who's DTGAF is pretty much impossible to screw up. Lumberjack Bonanza posted:The underlying system is certainly flawed, but a lot of people will overlook mediocre mechanics if you've got everything else in place. I don't really think this game was ever going to be great (Bioware was a very odd choice), but I've seen plenty of people in this thread that don't think the gameplay was all that bad. Another couple months on their deadline and the game probably would have looked and sounded far better. I want you to try playing a rhythm game in a train or a long car ride. These are not games you play when the slightest bump will gently caress you up, and in a game who's combat is entirely designed around it the game is just impossible. Given another year that wasn't going to change. The plot's basis is one of the most retarded things to hit the Sonic franchise, It is literally the production of a creepy rear end crazy man, and I refuse to say anything more until everything is said and done with the reveals. Time wasn't going to change this. The control scheme is a pain in the rear end, so unless Bioware at some point would go "The D-Pad! That's still a thing" that wasn't going to change with Time. The only thing that could have potetnially gotten better were Art assets and music assets. If you can forgive a game for looking and sounding pretty when everything else is the shits... good for you I guess. I can't. The core concepts are flaws, and time can not cure that. You might have gotten a merely mediocre game instead of "horrible" but it was never going to be good.
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# ¿ Jan 1, 2014 12:33 |
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Lumberjack Bonanza posted:I can't imagine Bioware wanted to release it that way. Why not? the last couple of games they've released have all been hot garbage, and they spend the credit sequence of this game jerking themselves off. I think they were just glad to be out of the contract.
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# ¿ Jan 1, 2014 13:49 |
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Dr. Buttass posted:Yeah but he wasn't funny before. Being funny is new. And out of character. No. Tenebrais posted:I really like the writing in this game, at least as much as we've seen so far. Out-of-character or not, a lot of it is fun to read. Much more so than the standard Sonic fare, certainly. If you like this games writing, then you would love the comics as they are written by Ian Flynn. Onmi fucked around with this message at 00:14 on Jan 2, 2014 |
# ¿ Jan 2, 2014 00:10 |
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Cheez posted:Uhh, why did you give Off Panel as an example? Those are purposely taking the piss out of the comic. because I had it pre-sliced, and really didn't want to go through the effort of scanning the new issues involving big the cat beating up Silver Sonic. I had a few other things but I posted them earlier in the thread.
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# ¿ Jan 2, 2014 07:28 |
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# ¿ Apr 18, 2024 00:05 |
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Dr. Buttass posted:I haven't had a chance to play Lost World yet but I'm told it fell into the same "candy-colored animals having deep grimdark serious problems" trap that made '06 such an unbearable piece of poo poo. No. Not at all. How could you ever look at Lost World and think it's anything like 06? you would have to have a problem with their being a plot at all to be pissed off at Lost Worlds plot. Sonic should be drat well allowed to have pixar-tier romps of adventure, and if people seriously can't stomach a plot like that in a Sonic game they really have problems. That's what Lost Worlds, Colours and hell, Unleashed, All have in common.
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# ¿ Jan 2, 2014 11:50 |