Sonic falls again

[Berny Marcus]

With the positive receptions of Sonic Colors, and Sonic Generations, some have thought the speedy blue hedgehog we all know since the 90s was back on track to making good games again.

Apparently this time it isn't the case. Sonic: Lost World got crushed by the gaming press media with mediocre reviews, the Wii U version though got more positive reception then it's 3DS counterpart.

What do you think about this?

 

[scorptatious]

Well, mediocre is better than another Sonic 06 I guess.

Frankly I had no intentions to buy the game. Sonic Generations was good, but that wasn't really enough to make me want to buy another Sonic game.

Plus it looks like "Super Mario Galaxy... but with Sonic!" Wasn't really all that impressed with it from the get go.

 

[Daystar Clarion]

I have the game, and I actually quite like.

Do I like it as much as Generation? Hmmm, probably not, but it's still a solid platformer, and the soundtrack is terrific.

It's not as good as I was hoping it would be, but it's hardly mediocre.

I think Jim's review hit the nail on the head. It isn't brilliant, but it's a step in the right direction.

I'd suggest people actually play the game before calling it a failure.

 

[GoaThief]

What do I think about it? I don't really care, unlike Mario which stayed relatively true to it's roots and has a consistently great output (if not always original), Sonic has blustered and blundered it's way to irrelevance and become more of an annoyance than anything else.

Disagreeable and irritating main character(s), check. Largely poor gaming products, check. Reliance on previous glory to push aforementioned product, check. Probably best to put Sonic and Co out to pasture in my honest opinion.

 

[ScrabbitRabbit]

Eh, I'm willing to try it anyway, it just isn't a "must-buy" anymore. I thoroughly enjoyed Unleashed, despite it's reception (slightly more than Colours, even!) so I'd rather play it for myself.

The only mainline Sonic game I thought was truly bad was Sonic '06. Even Sonic Heroes was merely mediocre, I thought.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Can you still fall if you never got up from EVERY OTHER FALL in the first place?

 

[ToastiestZombie]

I have the game, and I actually quite like.

Do I like it as much as Generation? Hmmm, probably not, but it's still a solid platformer, and the soundtrack is terrific.

It's not as good as I was hoping it would be, but it's hardly mediocre.

I think Jim's review hit the nail on the head. It isn't brilliant, but it's a step in the right direction.

I'd suggest people actually play the game before calling it a failure.

This, I've watched some of the reviews and damn if I muted them it would look more like a death reel than a review. Most of the ones I've read have "It's too hard" or "It's not fast enough" for their main complaints. IGN gave this a lower score than Beyond: Two Souls, a game where you simply cannot fail.

 

[Rin Tezuka]

I really don't get the whole "Sonic Lost World is a failure" thing. Is everyone just reading Escapist's and Edge's reviews? Reviews for the game are all over the shop, from bad to average to good to great. Hell, Nintendo World Report gave it a 9 and Famitsu gave it 36/40. Even our very own Jim gave it a 7.5

Overall, I'd say it comes down to making up your own mind. Granted it's no Generations, but with reviews like this, you'd be crazy to base your judgement solely on them. Even worse when people are focusing on the negative reviews as always.

 

[FourCartridge]

I would like some user impressions before going ahead and joining the "Sonic has no respect again" crowd. The fansite I go to is going nuts over them and we could use someone with a clearer head.

I wonder how Sonic Team is feeling right now...

 

[MysticSlayer]

From what I can gather people don't like the fact that it went too far back to its 1991 roots of being more about semi-fast, momentum-based platforming rather than straight-up speed. Considering that's what I've been wanting Sonic to return to, this really only seems to confirm that I'll likely enjoy the game, even if a lot of reviewers don't. While I am worried about the jumping issues and occasional pausing the game does in certain moves, they seem like minor worries right now compared to how fun the game looks and sounds otherwise. In other words, my decision to buy it hasn't been changed at all by these reviews.

 

[DaViller]

I'll rent to see if it's any good. I hope it doesnt suck though, I liked sonic colours a lot and was looking forward to this.

 

[Shadowstar38]

If you based the value of things off metacrictic, yes. It feel.

Reviews aren't shit.

Come back once everyone's had a chance to play it for awhile.

 

[Berny Marcus]

If you based the value of things off metacrictic, yes. It feel.

Reviews aren't shit.

Come back once everyone's had a chance to play it for awhile.

Nope not going anywhere.

 

[Fox12]

I want to see the Sonic game where he's a bitter drunk reminiscing about the good old days while everyone else has moved on with their lives. Maybe Tails has a 9-5 desk job and a family, while Knuckles opened his own boxing ring. Then, like, every couple of weeks he'll come over and share a few beers with Tails, or have long conversations with Knuckles at midnight in the abandoned ring, and wonder what happened. Then, afterwards, he just... walks the streets of Manhattan aimlessly, his collar popped up against the November wind, and reflects on his life beneath the golden street lights. Afterwards he hails a taxi and goes home, ready to do the whole thing again tomorrow.

Maybe, like, the next day he's walking down the road and some kid spots him. "Hey, mommy, isn't that Sonic the Hedgehog?" Sonic smiles.
"Don't look honey, he's just a hasbeen."

Then the game just explores the life of a hero who is well past his prime, and nobody really wants him anymore. Like, he's still alive, but the worlds moved on without him. Then he looks up and sees masterchief saving the world on a giant telescreen while everyone claps. Afterwards he runs into Megaman at the local bar, and they talk for a while.

 

[BoredRolePlayer]

I must be lost because the game isn't out yet, but people are already screaming failure...must be nice to be a moron who can't play a game to form their own opinion.

 

[shrekfan246]

I want to see the Sonic game where he's a bitter drunk reminiscing about the good old days while everyone else has moved on with their lives. Maybe Tails has a 9-5 desk job and a family, while Knuckles opened his own boxing ring. Then, like, every couple of weeks he'll come over and share a few beers with Tails, or have long conversations with Knuckles at midnight in the abandoned ring, and wonder what happened. Then, afterwards, he just... walks the streets of Manhattan aimlessly, his collar popped up against the November wind, and reflects on his life beneath the golden street lights. Afterwards he hails a taxi and goes home, ready to do the whole thing again tomorrow.

Maybe, like, the next day he's walking down the road and some kid spots him. "Hey, mommy, isn't that Sonic the Hedgehog?" Sonic smiles.
"Don't look honey, he's just a hasbeen."

Then the game just explores the life of a hero who is well past his prime, and nobody really wants him anymore. Like, he's still alive, but the worlds moved on without him. Then he looks up and sees masterchief saving the world on a giant telescreen while everyone claps. Afterwards he runs into Megaman at the local bar, and they talk for a while.

Pitch it to Telltale, I think they're the only ones who would actually be able to make that idea work well. XD

I must be lost because the game isn't out yet, but people are already screaming failure...must be nice to be a moron who can't play a game to form their own opinion.

Well, it is technically out in the UK. But I take your point, and people have been very quick to jump on the "Oh, another bad Sonic game!" bandwagon ever since Sonic '06 (or Shadow/Heroes/Adventure depending on who you talk to, but '06 is the general consensus). Hell, Sonic 4 Episode 2 has below 60 on Metacritic as well, part of which I can only imagine is because people were still angry about Episode 1, because I absolutely love that game and it fixed a vast number of the most glaring problems Episode 1 had.

As far as Lost World is concerned, a lot of the mediocre reviews I've seen have just been blasting it for being too much like the old Genesis games (lolwut? People have been blasting all of the other 3D Sonic games for not being enough like the Genesis titles...) or for just not being like Colors/Generations, which I don't think is a fair comparison. While I hope we haven't seen the last of the Generations-style gameplay, the game deserves to be judged on its own merits, and it seems like the people who have been looking at it without comparing it to Generations are mostly saying that while the control scheme takes a while to get used to and the game has a bunch of niggling, annoying gimmicks that drag it down, it's great fun once you get the hang of it.