The ideal Sonic game. Has the perfect blend of exploration and speed, with massive sprawling level layouts, all featuring their own unique paths for the three playable characters. It's all been said at some point prior, but this game really is worthy of venerating in as many permutations as human language can possibly entail.
The level selection mantains a coherent aesthetic throughout: that of a once unexplored jungle kingdom in the midst of being hastily converted into Robotnik's latest base of operations. In spite of this there is a huge breadth of variety in the level themes, with no two acts looking exactly alike.
The game's story is told through a blend of mid-level transitions, stage transitions, and short cutscenes. All of it is rendered in-engine and punctuated just so, leaving the player engrossed in a state of complete immersion; almost always in control and not simply along for the ride. Even with this extremely restrained approach, the character of Knuckles and his home of Angel Island both go through their own distinct arcs.
The visual approaching to storytelling here is nothing short of masterful in it's execution. A clear throughline from the end of Sonic 2 is mantained with the aid of a brief introdutary cutscene, providing an important moment of clarity for returning players. Then we get treated to an early super transformation sequence, which will no doubt inspire awe and curosity in what's to come for onboarders, as well as any returning players who did not deign to collect all the emeralds last go around.
Another example of this show don't tell approach is found in Knuckles' route through the story, whcih takes place after the events of the main campaign. This is made apparent with only a few simple tweaks to some of the bg elements and sprites, which one can easily miss if they aren't paying attention. The facts are never made abundantly clear because they are ultimately secondary to one's enjoyment of the actual game. The visual details serve their narrative purpose in an entirely unobtrusive way which rewards and respects a budding youngster's curiosity and intellectual capcity.
I could go on, and trust that I will when I can find the time. Just play the game if you haven't already, for the love of based xenophobic Naka san.
Nearly perfect.
Lock on technology is going to change the world as we know it.
A divine miracle brought to us by the OG Retroite himself, Christian Whitehead. I just wish all of the game's sprites had the same amount of attention to detail and polish as the character animations. The mini-bosses also strike a weird balance, many of them either feeling overdesigned or somewhat unfinished. The lack of a coherent plotline is also notable, especially when everything else about this game is about on par with the lofty standards set by S3&K.
This ranking is subject to change the moment I can will myself to remove these nostalgia goggles. Someday, surely...
JP soundtrack is superior.
Dreams Come True.
The fact that I have to replay Marble Zone ruins a package I otherwise consider superior to Sonic 2.
The Loony Toons esque slapstick violence gets my goat every time. This is a rare example of an early 3D game which has managed to retain much of its visual appeal.
Would have been 10/10 if it only used Tsu rules. :(
This game is a wholesome romp of an arcade classic. I will personally rough up any nerd who says otherwise.
Lacking the Classic physics. How did the spindash ship in such a broken state?
Very anti-Sonic like in everything but its presentation, but a decent game overall. The flicky collecting objective does try my patience though.
The framerate suffers needlessly due to unoptimized code. The pinball tables are unorthodox in their design and it's hard to get situated initially given the Genesis's standard resolution. The difficulty feels just a touch too unforgiving by default as a result.
Unbeknownst to many, this racer is actually very finely tuned, with plenty of hair-trigger mechanics that are extremely rewarding to master. Players who haven't at least completed the game's trial mode and gained an intimate familiarity with its controls are in for a bad time however, as the course difficulty curve is rather steep.
Tight turns and deleterious obstacles are everywhere, not to mention ramps and other shortcuts with high execution barriers. The latter even presuppose mechanics knowledge never formally outlined outside of the game's manual. Of course an intelligent player will likely be able to infer them regardless, especially when pitted against certain trial missions which are impossible to clear otherwise.
For a 6th gen title the level assets are beautifully realized. The last minute inclusion of formation switching gates was kind of unfortunate, and much of the game is admittedly a jank fest. However, if properly harnessed, said jank can actually elevate the experience by enabling a myriad of entertaining exploits.
The middling Werehog segments and mandatory medal collecting really drag the experience down. Shame, since I consider the rest of the package to be a cut above Generations in terms of overall quality.
Simply replace the Werehog with Knuckles, and give him souped up treasure hunting stages complete with the GoW inspired combat mechanics. It would have fit the game's main questline of emerald hunting and been a neat throwback to the Adventure series, as well as S3&K.
The level asthetics may have been peak, but too many of the layouts are just soulless.
Drill, the most fun and engaging wisp power, is tragically underutilized. Much of the game could have honestly been designed around it.
The special stages each being their own mini-labyrinth was a cool concept doomed never to return again. The game also bears many similarites to Sonic 3 for the Genesis, which I'm obviously in favor of.
This is the only GG game which deserved an enhanced console port. Perhaps then Nack wouldn't have had to languish in obscurity for so many years.
Not enough screen real estate.
The partnering mechanic was awesome, but still no screen real estate in a game which could have used it even moreso than its predecesors.
The only Sonic Metroidvania-like, and a decent one at that. Why Tails suddenly became a crippled pyrotechnics enthusiest for this one game is never really explained, but my headcanon is that this takes place in an alternate timeline where he and Sonic never met.
This game ranking is subject to change.
Bridge Zone.
2d boost2win gameplay, riddled with mindlessly repetitive levels, death pits out of nowhere, and a bizarre OST scored by midgets and also Fat Albert. I should probably despise it more, but for some reason I find myself returning to this game more often then even the Advance titles.
A guilty pleasure with crippling pacing problems. Has some of the worst levels and level objectives in franchise history.
An inferior boost game released several years after Sonic Generations, a game which had already fully realized its design paradigm. What this game did with the world building of the Adventure titles also pissed me off immensely.
Good god, where is the screen real estate!? A game that moves this fast should have had Sonic Pocket Adventure sized character sprites, even if that would mean bumping down the visual clarity a fair amount. Also even with the strategy guide the bonus stages are incredibly tedious to access, yet the devs expect you to complete them FOUR TIMES in order to unlock everything? I never have, never will, and I refuse to cheat my way the rest of the way simply out of spite.
Only the soundtrack remains goated. There are way too few courses to sink your teeth into, especially for a racing game released post MK64. Unlockable racers and secrets don't do much to extend playtime either. So take me back in time, to another world, where this game got the budget it needed to actually be good.
Don't misunderstand, I have fond memories of grinding for rare skills in this garbage. However, this is merely a servicable Sonic visual novell. As a fighting game it's hopelessly incompetent; a repititious spam fest completely devoid of any nuance or depth. And the RPG mechanics exclusive to the game's story mode are merely tacked on in such a way as to pad the campaign's length.
The grind hits players like a brick wall right at the start. Emerl should not control like actual detritis outside of maybe the first fight you're expected to lose against Shadow. The SP grind to lift him out of the gutter would have 100% filtered me as a child if I weren't such an ardent fan of the Adventure universe and its inhabitants.
The lack of variety in the game's roster, as well as its maybe two unique encounter types means the game runs out of tricks about halfway into chapter two... OF EIGHT!? I think I'll pass on the second playthrough there SEGA, thanks.
This game feels about as feature complete as those bootleg SNES carts they used to make in third world countries, and also the trackball controls gave me tendonitis. Level design centered around setpieces has never been my jam for platformer arcade titles going as far back as the original Donkey Kong.
Features many interesting and potentially fun mechanics, but ultimately the game suffers form a lack of cohesion. For instance, parkour could have been a very fun core mechanic, but like the drill wisp from Colors it goes largely unexplored.
I harbor a soft spot for this title for reasons I cannot vividly recall. My final analysis is thus pending.
Too short, too easy, and too safe. The new partnering mechanics are little more than ill conceived gimmicks, but otherwise the game can only rattle off the same tired paradigms which have been proven to work time and again in older titles.
Metal and Fang were cool additions, but it shares in just about all of the flaws of its predecessor.
Possibly the worst mascot racer ever made. It's slow and wonky as all hell, and the sprite pop-in makes it nigh impossible to pre-emptively judge the ideal racing line.
It's just so dreadfully dull. If it weren't for the game's incredible presentation and the addition of Vector the Crocodile this would be right down there with Blast.
The battered skeletal remains of what could have been a decent Adventure title, with only a few shreds of vestigal merit inherited form it's predecesors.
I really don't know what Sonic Team was going for here, but it's awful in just about every way a game can be.
Made me lose faith in Bioware as a company. I was actually planning a one man infiltration of their mobile division just to make the devs responsible for this suffer for their transgressions.
The shill campaign for this product ultimately turned me into a cynic with regards to game publishing, as well as an ardent believer in the Sonic Cycle.
Simply unnerving.
Almost the worst GG game. The levels are just too linear, and with drab reptitive theming. The OG Sonic Robo Blast has more engaging level design if you can believe it.
The spritework is also a mess. On the one hand you have your standard 2d Sonic terrain, only it's bereft of any sense of the visual depth found in tilsets from previous titles, even the inferior GG ones. These uncharacteristically flat assets are then stitched together by these jarring and butt ugly isometric sections, which are repeated ad nauseam to a baffling degree.
Ultimately the game feels like a dev branch of Triple Trouble that went horribly wrong.
Chaos may have had an issue with lack of depth, but I'd take that any day over the seizure inducing 8-bit CG they used for literally all of this game's assets. It's an abomination, and once again the levels are bland and extremely linear.
I was convinced this was a bootleg product when I first booted up the ROM. Who in their right mind chose to harvest this detritis from the cutting room floor?