I am legitimately sad about what happened with Sonic Boom.

[Dragonbums]

Call me crazy, call me foolish, or call me too naive, but I was probably one of the very few people who were genuinely excited about Sonic Boom.

I really was. I am so disheartened to hear that it's a complete buggy mess.

The look and design of the game really did give off that old PS2/GC/Xbox era of design that we don't really see much of anymore.

And-looking at the game- it's literally like one half of the team did it's job, and the other half of the team completely fucked up.


Like seriously, the art assets, the writing, the designs, and the modeling all look stellar. They look very good. These guys clearly put effort into making what should of been a well done game.

But then you got the other side. This game had zero testing. It wasn't optimized for the console it was on,(like the framerates are so choppy) it had glitches out the ass, some assets didn't load properly, the cutscenes might as well of been roughs- like- it literally wasn't a finished game. At all.

All so they can get the game out before holiday season-no- in tangent of their show.

Like...I'm really disheartened by this. I want to say I hope they get a second chance, but I really don't see this happening. Good thing SEGA of Japan made the call to have it restricted to US only.

 

[sanquin]

At least most companies have the sense to finish a game enough to make it playable, early access and such not counted. But to me it feels like release dates have been more important than finishing the game for many years now. It even feels like it's become the standard. How many times did you have to download a patch in the first 2 days of a game's release? If a game needs to be patched so soon after release clearly it wasn't finished yet. I remember a time where an online patch wouldn't come for the first two weeks to a month, -after- normal players had given feedback. Now it's almost always "release the game quickly! we'll finish it later with patches."

 

[Dragonbums]

At least most companies have the sense to finish a game enough to make it playable, early access and such not counted. But to me it feels like release dates have been more important than finishing the game for many years now. It even feels like it's become the standard. How many times did you have to download a patch in the first 2 days of a game's release? If a game needs to be patched so soon after release clearly it wasn't finished yet. I remember a time where an online patch wouldn't come for the first two weeks to a month, -after- normal players had given feedback. Now it's almost always "release the game quickly! we'll finish it later with patches."

That's what I've been starting to see as well.

It's fucking disgusting to be honest. It's especially bad that this had to happen to a studio with otherwise great potential now being squandered. Wasn't this supposed to be released in 2015 or something?

 

[Emcee_N]

I wish I could say I was surprised by this, but in the end, it's a licensed platformer. That it happens to feature their mascot apparently does not alter the approach they took to the game, and this does sadden me.

 

[Relish in Chaos]

SEGA couldn't make Sonic games for the life of them anymore. This same thing happened with Sonic 06.

 

[Halla Burrica]

It's a shame really. Sonic looked like he was going the right way, with well-received games like Colors and Generations, Lost World was said to be okay. But now he's soared to high and falls right to the ground You'd think SEGA would have learned ot to rush a project from Sonic 06, but apparently not. Just give them enough time, and they forget what they did wrong and just fuck up AGAIN.

 

[Dizchu]

It's time for everyone to just give up on Sonic.

Its fanbase is comprised primarily by the cringiest people on the internet these days.
10,000 furry characters that look exactly the same apart from their colour.

Load up your Genesis/Genesis emulators and forget any of this ever happened.

 

[Sleepy Sol]

SEGA couldn't make Sonic games for the life of them anymore. This same thing happened with Sonic 06.

Nah, this time they just hired an inexperienced dev team staffed with ex-Naughty Dog devs.

Cue jokes about them being ex-devs for a reason.

My money's on Sega rushing the game out to coincide with the TV series (which is apparently surprisingly decent) release. They do make tons of ham-handed decisions.

 

[GloatingSwine]

Since they made precisely one good 3D sonic game ever, Generations, and then completely ignored everything that worked about that game for subsequent releases who is surprised that there is a shitty Sonic game coming out?

Sad, but not surprised.

 

[Fieldy409_v1legacy]

Sonic died a long time ago, just let him rest Sega stop trying to zombify him.

 

[SD-Fiend]

I'd say I was reasonably hopeful that this game would be alright but in the end it turned out that this game was just made for the TV show and not the other way around like I expected.

Thankfully this is just a spin-off so the stain on SEGAs name isn't too great.

I still wonder why we don't have another Sonic Adventure/ Heroes yet. Those are good examples of what to do with multiple characters in a Sonic game. I really don't want 06 to be the last of that series.

 

[Hairless Mammoth]

Well that's sad. Sonic Boom turned out to be Sega's answer to AC: Unity; horrible frame rate, glitches in glitches, rushed. And every review I've seen say the gameplay would have been boring even if the technical aspect was perfect. It's almost like Sega has this bungie cord strapping to him to a pile of shit. Every time he manages to get far with game like Colors and Generations, he gets fatigued and slowly is pulled back passing games like SA 1 & 2 and Lost World before dropping in crap like '06 and this mess.

I guess it was a good thing I picked up Colors, used, 5 days ago. The Sonic sucks stigma was so strong back then I avoided him for nearly ten years (not counting constant play throughs of S3&K).

 

[xaszatm]

Call me crazy, call me foolish, or call me too naive, but I was probably one of the very few people who were genuinely excited about Sonic Boom.

I really was. I am so disheartened to hear that it's a complete buggy mess.

The look and design of the game really did give off that old PS2/GC/Xbox era of design that we don't really see much of anymore.

And-looking at the game- it's literally like one half of the team did it's job, and the other half of the team completely fucked up.


Like seriously, the art assets, the writing, the designs, and the modeling all look stellar. They look very good. These guys clearly put effort into making what should of been a well done game.

But then you got the other side. This game had zero testing. It wasn't optimized for the console it was on,(like the framerates are so choppy) it had glitches out the ass, some assets didn't load properly, the cutscenes might as well of been roughs- like- it literally wasn't a finished game. At all.

All so they can get the game out before holiday season-no- in tangent of their show.

Like...I'm really disheartened by this. I want to say I hope they get a second chance, but I really don't see this happening. Good thing SEGA of Japan made the call to have it restricted to US only.

Really, there were two big reasons why Sonic Boom failed so badly.

1. This game was originally supposed to be multi-platform, possibly not even on the Wii U but Sega roped this game into Nintendo's 3-Sonic Exclusive contract. As such, the game was made using the Cry Engine. Anyone can tell you that this engine isn't the best one to use on the Wii U. It can be done, but it's...buggy. Add to the fact that this game was originally a Xbox 360/PS3 focused originally than ported to the Wii U and you have the basics for a bad game code foundation.

2. This is actually more important than the first one but the main reason why this game looks like half of the people didn't do there job was because around half of the people in Big Red Button left the company in the middle of production. These people included the game's producer. This is perhaps the biggest reason why this game failed. Especially from a gaming standpoint as most of the people who left were programmers, leaving the game a buggy, unfinished mess.

It's a shame really, I was sort of looking forward to this game. I just really wished the characters would shut up though...

 

[wadark]

I gave up on Sonic Boom the minute I heard the hype machine begin to mention puzzle solving as part of the gameplay. I feel like you couldn't miss the point of Sonic any harder if you tried. But to hear its a buggy ass mess, well, not too surprised there either, frankly. They dont seem to care about the characters, story, setting, or style...why care about the functionality at that point.

I'll just go back to my Sonic Ultimate collection on Steam. Generations is pretty alright...

 

[Fox12]

I...didn't know this existed. When was the last time this brand gave us anything good? It's time for a new mascot, I think. Years of cocaine will do this to a hedgehog.

Now give us a *real* sequel to Valkyria Chronicles, SEGA. Please? Seriously, you can make all bad sonic games you want. You can make a whole franchise based on colonial marines. I'll forgive you, really.

 

[AetherWolf]

SEGA couldn't make Sonic games for the life of them anymore. This same thing happened with Sonic 06.

Sonic Colors was a surprising step in the right direction. Strip away the pretentious stories and unneeded characters, no unfitting gimmicks, a light-hearted atmosphere, and limit gameplay to the one thing people actually enjoy doing in a Sonic game: running fast. It's a shame that they couldn't keep that direction.

 

[karloss01]

Good thing SEGA of Japan made the call to have it restricted to US only.

what do you mean by this? I'm able to get this game in the UK. I'm wondering what the hell is wrong with Sega. They made Generations and Colors, the first time a 3D sonic game did well (never liked adventure and Heroes was meh, ran into walls all the time) and they flat out ignore it and go a different direction.

The Problem with sonic is that they keep trying to make the games complex, they should stick with the simple goal of getting to the end of the level. Mario does this and its a success, you don't Mario enveloped in some overly complex plot with an ever increasing roster of characters to use a backdrops.

 

[-Dragmire-]

Like seriously, the art assets, the writing, the designs, and the modeling all look stellar. They look very good. These guys clearly put effort into making what should of been a well done game.

There's an old man, Cliff I think, whose eyes are a bit messed. The artist didn't soften the normals on the entire eye mesh so you can see some fairly harsh edges on Cliff's eyeballs. It really bugs me because if it's anything like Maya that the studio is using then the fix is literally to select the eye mesh edges and click the soften normals button.

 

[GloatingSwine]

The Problem with sonic is that they keep trying to make the games complex, they should stick with the simple goal of getting to the end of the level. Mario does this and its a success, you don't Mario enveloped in some overly complex plot with an ever increasing roster of characters to use a backdrops.

The real problem with Sonic is that they've never really figured out how to make Sonic fun to play in a 3D environment. The 3D platformers that worked well, Mario, classic Spyro, Jak & Daxter, etc. all have characters who are inherently fun to use. Sonic never really has been, he was always awkward and fiddly to navigate at the speeds the game intended you to go at and the environments weren't really well designed to accomodate retaining momentum (which was what the 2D games did well).

 

[Soviet Heavy]

Sonic's shoulder/back spines are really creeping me out more than they really should.