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 Sonic has been the subject of so many memes and gone through so much pop-culture mutation -especially on the internet- that it's often hard to see the games for what they are anymore. This is primarily true for Sonic The Hedgehog (2006), which is by far the least polished product Sonic Team has ever produced. We're going to be playing that one, today. What sets this LP apart, exactly? I'll be discussing the level/game design, and demonstrating how to S-Rank every Sonic stage. Wait, why? Sonic The Hedgehog is, when you get down to it, just a failed videogame. It was ambitious, over-hyped by its marketing team, rushed through development, and it came out broken. It deserves the same chance every other videogame should get: to be thoroughly analyzed for both its successes and faults, regardless of its pre-release hype, series-related stigma, or memetic reputation. Videos          Extras    
GamesAreSupernice fucked around with this message at 21:25 on Mar 17, 2018 |
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Feb 4, 2018 06:21
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You're loving mad. Or am I the mad one for watching along?
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Feb 4, 2018 06:27
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This looks like a fascinating wild ride so I'm down for this.
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Feb 4, 2018 07:30
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You know, I've watched a dozen or so LP's of this game, and this is the first time I've ever seen that cave in the Mach Speed section. I always assumed that the turn onto that ramp was too tight to reliably reach it You've definitely got my attention
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Feb 4, 2018 08:08
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look i like you but you might be literally insane
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Feb 4, 2018 09:09
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Well, I guess I'm watching this game again.
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Feb 4, 2018 09:20
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i know you gotta go fast but jesus
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Feb 4, 2018 10:42
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GASN, please call a helpline. You don't need to suffer alone like this 
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Feb 4, 2018 12:43
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Will you be S-ranking the hard mode DLC you mad, mad, fool?
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Feb 4, 2018 14:18
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Neoman please. OP clearly has some issues he's trying to work through, suffering is necessary for catharsis. I can't remember just how much of this game I played before throwing my controller away and uninstalling, you must be made of sterner stuff OP.
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Feb 4, 2018 14:22
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Nothing can stop him - he has the Passion - the Playable Passion 
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Feb 4, 2018 14:22
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Hitlers Gay Secret posted:You're loving mad. eventually if enough people go mad, mad will become the new normal The Door Frame posted:You know, I've watched a dozen or so LP's of this game, and this is the first time I've ever seen that cave in the Mach Speed section. I always assumed that the turn onto that ramp was too tight to reliably reach it the turn is super doable, but you have to have more faith in the controls than i think anyone else was willing to mandatory lesbian posted:look i like you but you might be literally insane i like you too! you post with a serial experiments lain avatar and make good comments; i'm not sure about the insanity part but i'll get back to you after some introspection Ramos posted:Well, I guess I'm watching this game again. i play Sonic 2006 at least once every year so i think we can suffer together SSNeoman posted:GASN, please call a helpline. You don't need to suffer alone like this Horrible Lurkbeast posted:Neoman please. OP clearly has some issues he's trying to work through, suffering is necessary for catharsis. i actually thought planning routes through all the levels and figuring out how to optimize score was pretty fun! the worst parts were the loading times BioEnchanted posted:Nothing can stop him - he has the Passion - the Playable Passion fancy seeing you here, i like the new signature
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Feb 4, 2018 15:58
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I wondered what you'd been up to the last few weeks, but I wasn't expecting this. Yet I should have, because I think I remember you mentioning it in another thread a while back. The game is fundamentally broken, but I really wanted to like it. I do enjoy aspects of it--hell, I'm a sucker for twisty temporal loop plot lines like this, so I even kind of like the story. There are a few places where it even feels playable, I dare say not bad, but they are far outstripped by everything else.
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Feb 4, 2018 16:15
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KieranWalker posted:The game is fundamentally broken, but I really wanted to like it. I do enjoy aspects of it--hell, I'm a sucker for twisty temporal loop plot lines like this, so I even kind of like the story. There are a few places where it even feels playable, I dare say not bad, but they are far outstripped by everything else. it's definitely a bad game, but everyone already knows that, so i wanted to talk about its positives a bit instead
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Feb 4, 2018 16:21
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GamesAreSupernice posted:it's definitely a bad game, but everyone already knows that, so i wanted to talk about its positives a bit instead Yeah, I think that's definitely something worth talking about. All the aspects of a good game are buried in there under the glitches and sloppy controls someplace. That first mach speed section might be the best one in the game, in so far as it actually mostly works, aside from that one ramp. I recall thinking it was actually kind of fun once you got the hang of it. The first Sonic stage in general was inoffensive at worst, really. It's very reminiscent of Sonic Adventure's first stage, which is probably what they were going for.
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Feb 4, 2018 16:33
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The loading times were slowly chipping away at my patience but it was the constant cutscenes that were the straw which broke my back. it felt like the game was needling me when I was already annoyed.
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Feb 4, 2018 17:15
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Neat idea for an LP, I like it when people take games that have been LP'd to death and go at them with a different perspective from everyone else. Honestly, S-ranking the stages in this game isn't that hard. In my experience you just need the patience to pull of a deathless run. This isn't really a game where optimizing your time is all that involved or important. And the levels are broken messes filled with cheap deaths, but there's also a weird consistency to the brokenness so that once you beat a level once, beating it again isn't nearly as hard because you've learned what not to do to keep the game from making GBS threads itself and killing you. The thing is that in an ideal world where the game always performed like you make it look in these videos and the bugs were all taken out, the game design still has huge problems. Sonic's movement has no real momentum to it, and his ground velocity has no influence on his aerial velocity after jumping, which kills any sense of flow. The enemy gauntlets are sometimes skippable, but they're still there, frequent, and obnoxious. The levels can feel very barren and repetitive, with the same enemies placed everywhere. The buddies are abrupt diversions from the core gameplay at best. Sonic's movement isn't that fast so reaching those shortcuts doesn't exactly require much in the ways of reflexes or timing. If they provided a different way to progress through the level that would be fine, but a floating ring that lets you automatically skip a section of gameplay should at least be hard to reach. The ground pound is bound to the same button as the light speed dash, a returning problem that had already been addressed in Shadow the Hedgehog of all games. Homing attacks leave Sonic more or less frozen in mid-air until he lands and their range is way further than is reasonable or intuitive, problems that would return in Sonic Lost World and Sonic Forces. Homing attack chains are spammed to the point of exhaustion, a problem that has persisted to this day. Dash panels and springs are everywhere, which remove your control of Sonic when you hit them. Often dash panels will send you into a pair of spikes that you couldn't see and can't avoid because Sonic's controls are locked after hitting a dash panel. Springs either carry you from one point to the other automatically or send you upwards with no momentum and the same stiff, almost-frozen controls that you get after a homing attack. Sonic 06 is a broken, blatantly unfinished game. But even if you patched every obvious glitch in the game, it would still be plagued with issues. Most of the challenge in the game comes from fighting with the controls, remove that and what you'd get is a pretty bland and insultingly easy platformer. In a game that's as unfinished as this though, the line between "bug" and "feature" is blurry. When entire mechanics are barely functional, determining what might've been patched out given another year of development and what was just a bad idea becomes a lot of guesswork. The fact that these poor design decisions have shown up in other Sonic games certainly doesn't help.
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Feb 4, 2018 17:18
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i actually think the really absurd range on the homing attack is a positive
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Feb 4, 2018 17:42
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Yeah, I don't doubt that there are a bunch of features in most of these modern Sonics that people hate, which do reward mastery and make you look stylin' when you pull them off. It's just, until you actually get to that level of mastery, well. What I'm saying is I'm really looking forward to seeing how the game was "supposed to" be played.
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Feb 5, 2018 02:12
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This one's going down in the history books for sure. Glad to be here from the beginning. edit: wait, just the sonic stages? aww Discendo Vox fucked around with this message at 04:21 on Feb 5, 2018 |
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Feb 5, 2018 04:04
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Discendo Vox posted:This one's going down in the history books for sure. Glad to be here from the beginning. it's definitely possible to s-rank all the other characters' stages! and i'm showing how to S-Rank some of Shadow's stages too source: i've done it myself
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Feb 5, 2018 05:12
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Well GASN, you are an odd fellow, but I must say: You S-rank a bad sonic game.
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Feb 5, 2018 08:58
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Samovar posted:Well GASN, you are an odd fellow, but I must say: Both of these are accurate statements!
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Feb 5, 2018 12:27
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It's time for a change of pace. We're S-Ranking one of Shadow's stages.
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Feb 5, 2018 19:00
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I've always thought that people focus too much on the gameplay and glitchiness of Sonic '06 when pointing out how bad it is. The game was released in a beta stage so it makes sense that the groundwork for the level design is there and you can see similar elements to what was in the Adventure games. With more time and work it would have been more enjoyable and in line with the other 3D Sonic games. My beef is with certain other parts of the game. The aesthetics are so bland that even if the graphics had more work put into them they would still lack charm and creativity. The adventure fields are too large, confusing and barren. The story is a train wreck. I don't know why it was decided that Sonic needed to be in a super realistic world with super realistic humans, or that this needed to be a soft reboot for the franchise. Even if the game was given another year or so of development these problems would still have persisted.
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Feb 6, 2018 02:27
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Wasn't there anyone to prune the limbs of that crazy ideas tree in the planning stage? I'm surprised there isn't a kitchen sink level.
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Feb 6, 2018 02:31
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There is a reason this LP is focusing entirely on the Action Stages. The adventures stages weren't an awful idea, but the original Adventure and even Unleashed did them better.
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Feb 6, 2018 02:39
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oh god the hovercraft wiping out in the victory screen I can appreciate levels with score grading focusing more on enemy kills than time, but Sonic's never really had a good combat system. ...maybe in Heroes?
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Feb 6, 2018 03:13
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Glazius posted:oh god the hovercraft wiping out in the victory screen In the first part of the game, maybe, but enemies have way too much health by late game. Combat and Sonic seem pretty incompatible, since combat means that the player can't be going fast
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Feb 6, 2018 03:24
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Combat in Sonic is best when it’s another movement technique to utilise.
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Feb 6, 2018 03:54
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Chaining homing attacks still seems like the best combat option, but I can't blame them for trying to branch out.
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Feb 6, 2018 05:50
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The best type of combat in Sonic is the one where you jump down from 500 feet in the air, kill a motobug, and then bounce back up 500 ft in the air.
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Feb 6, 2018 06:42
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I agree on the sense of speed in the 3D games feeling much bigger than the earlier ones, largely because in the later ones they could do interesting things with the tech that hadn't been thought of before - in Unleashed when I first left the soundtrack behind while boosting because I was actually moving faster than the speed of sound, that was a magical moment for me and what put me firmly in the "Liking Unleashed" camp
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Feb 6, 2018 06:46
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BioEnchanted posted:I agree on the sense of speed in the 3D games feeling much bigger than the earlier ones, largely because in the later ones they could do interesting things with the tech that hadn't been thought of before - in Unleashed when I first left the soundtrack behind while boosting because I was actually moving faster than the speed of sound, that was a magical moment for me and what put me firmly in the "Liking Unleashed" camp i thought that was a great touch too!
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Feb 6, 2018 12:45
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I like the fact you're doing a "new take" on this well-trodden game as opposed to the same crap we've seen for over a decade now about it. Good stuff! I've enjoyed the videos so far.
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Feb 6, 2018 14:26
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Lord_Magmar posted:Combat in Sonic is best when it’s another movement technique to utilise. GamesAreSupernice posted:Chaining homing attacks still seems like the best combat option, but I can't blame them for trying to branch out. Homing attack chains are definitely the way to do combat fast for Sonic; they pull it off nicely in a few of the games, and the ones where it doesn't work so well are usually down to wonky targeting (here's looking at you, Sonic Adventure 2).
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Feb 6, 2018 14:31
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judge reinhold posted:I like the fact you're doing a "new take" on this well-trodden game as opposed to the same crap we've seen for over a decade now about it. Good stuff! I've enjoyed the videos so far. next i'm gonna S-Rank "The Golden Compass" on PS2 KieranWalker posted:Homing attack chains are definitely the way to do combat fast for Sonic; they pull it off nicely in a few of the games, and the ones where it doesn't work so well are usually down to wonky targeting (here's looking at you, Sonic Adventure 2). i think Sonic Unleahsed, Colors, Generations, and Forces have the homing attack almost perfect i'd say Lost World too, 'cept I haven't seen much of that
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Feb 6, 2018 17:56
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GamesAreSupernice posted:next i'm gonna S-Rank "The Golden Compass" on PS2 I would largely agree with this except the caveat that Unleashed and Lost World have other problems, as does Forces. The Homing Attack is by and large not one of them in any of those games though.
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Feb 7, 2018 07:57
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Yeah, but most games have problems no matter how good they are - Okami on release had overly-long cutscenes potentially killing any replay value, Horizon Zero Dawn has somewhat wonky animations in the early game, Metal Gear has questionable treatment of women, like everyone groping Eva or the entire Beauty and the Beast Corps. The first 2 Witcher games had overly complex and unfriendly potion mechanics and of course Wind Waker slows down it's pace significantly during the second half with the Triforce Hunt. Most games have a mechanic that could have been explored better but weren't, or a character that was obnoxious, or even a bad level or frustrating boss fight, it's just a matter of "Can you look past the flaws?"
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Feb 7, 2018 08:10
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| # ? Jun 10, 2023 08:28 |
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the power of love
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Feb 8, 2018 20:23
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