#blorging

[woodlandhollow]

there's a fly on my taskbar but before i realised that i had a moment of "what new software did i add"

[atomic-chronoscaph]

Blorg, Famous Ex-Space Monster for Miller Lite (1977)

[juicyolpickle]

Meet the BLORG eh *coughs*

[the-crimson]

I love Forever wearing all white with a totem of undying while Bad wears all black and grey holding a death totem. The vibes are off the charts here for this marriage proposal

[okayxairen]

a quick comic about my experience running @obscuretobyfox

[bleaksqueak]

My horrid truth is that my favorite thing Toby Fox has ever done musically is a Homestuck/Gurren Lagan mashup.

If you've never heard this it slaps so hard. Megalovania and (the entire Undertale ost tbh) are masterful but I can't tell you how many times I've listened to this lol

[hipstersoulgushers]

Simmons absolutely suffering for this bc thats the only way to show off his sick cyborg rig! Also Tucker is here! hes got his diplomatic markers that are canon to me.

The flame decal on Simmons was something Grif slapped on there to match the other side.

[supagogoman]

My thoughts on Shadow Generations

I played Shadow Generations. Here are my thoughts about it.

tl;dr it's amazing

Before it was released I was already expecting to enjoy Shadow Generations. It was, after all, a follow up to Sonic Generations, one of my favourite Sonic games, so more of that sounded good to me.

Of course, I'd been burned by this before; Sonic Forces also promised to be 'more Generations' and that game ended up being pretty mediocre. Still, things were clearly different this time. One of those differences was the huge focus on our antihero - Shadow the Hedgehog.

Before I go on, I should preface by admitting that I never liked Shadow the Hedgehog. I wasn't a big fan of Sonic Adventure 2, the game he debuted in, and was of the opinion that he should have stayed dead at the end of that game instead of being bought back for Heroes. He was a fine character in SA2, but the Shadow the Hedgehog game released in 2005, with it's dark, edgy writing, made Shadow a huge joke to me. I'm surprised anyone could take that character seriously after they thought it was a good idea to give a cartoon hedgehog realistic guns. His backstory seemed like the progenitor for those terrible deviantart era OC fan characters. He became a meme for years because of SEGA's seeming lack of self awareness. This edginess continued somewhat in Sonic 06, but after the disasterous result of that game it seems like SEGA tried to course correct, and since then Sonic became much more lighthearted in tone and they became much more self aware.

Perhaps they course corrected too much, as the self-awareness almost went a little too far - at the time, I remember thinking Sonic Colours' writing and simplicity was refreshing, but it seems these days people complain about the jokes and humour in that game, and the kids began to yearn for the wacky shonen anime plots of the earlier games. I didn't entirely agree with this sentinent (I was always worried about what would happen if Sonic went back to it's EDGY phase again), but in the end I didn't care how terrible the story was so long as the gameplay was FUN. I still hold Sonic Colours in high regard, but not because of it's plot, it's because it was one of the few Sonic games that didn't make me want to kill myself (which are surprisingly rare in the entire series).

Frontiers marked an apparent shift to direct the story back to taking itself more seriously, and this trend has continued in Shadow Generations. Actually, I guess Forces also tried to do this, but Frontiers clearly had more competent writers (namely Ian Flynn) at the helm. Compared to it's companion game, Shadow Gens is darker in tone, and way more serious and dramatic. Unlike Sonic Gens, which is a celebration of Sonic's past games and history, Shadow Gens is a story that basically acts as a sequel to the Shadow 2005 game, exploring the tragic backstory of Shadow and his relationship with Maria, Gerald and Black Doom.

From what I wrote earlier you might think that this return to it's edgy roots might be something I was opposed to, and I did have some reservations initially, but it has actually been executed incredibly well. It's dramatic, but not overly edgy. It's darker, but not devoid of personality or charm. They walked a fine balance of making Shadow a more serious character with additional nuance to avoid making him seem like a joke (competent writing and not giving him guns probably helped a lot with this). The game's story, as well as the Dark Beginnings animated short, actually made me like Shadow the Hedgehog as a character for the first time ever. That being said, Shadow has the luxury of being pretty much the only character in the series that has a dark, tragic backstory to flesh out. Sonic couldn't have a story like this because his backstory amounts to being a way past cool dude who like to go fast, and I can't see them doing something like this with any other character (as funny as a stand alone Chaotix game exploring their financial problems sounds) There's nothing wrong with that, but what I'm getting at is I'm hoping whatever the story of the next game is will show restraint and be of an appropriate tone.

Anyway, I have discussed at great lengths about the story. I just thought it was interesting as someone who wasn't a fan of Shadow that it would win me over. I think that speaks to how well it was written Taking plot points from shitty games and working them into something more palatable to me. Even so, none of that would have mattered if the game sucked. As I mentioned earlier, I liked Sonic Colours not for it's story, but for it's gameplay. Shadow 05 has a shitty plot, but I could forgive it if the gameplay was good (it wasn't). So if Shadow Generations was a game that sucked then having a good story wasn't going to save it.

Thankfully, not only is this a great companion to Sonic Generations, but in my view this is one of the best 3D Sonic games ever made. When I played Sonic Frontiers, I wrote how it was a good foundation for what the next Sonic game should be. Although I enjoyed traversing the open zones, I suggested that they could be downscaled, and have more effort be put into more traditional Sonic stages rather than bite sized Cyberspace missions. Shadow Generations does exactly that - it's hub world, rather than being a glorified level select as it was on Sonic Generations, is now expanded to be it's own mini open zone, filled with rails, springs, ramps and many collectables that make traversing and exploring the hub fun. It feels a more polished too - the pop in isn't particularly noticable unlike Sonic Frontiers, and though the scale isn't as impressive as Frontiers it more than makes up for that with it's main stages - each with 2 acts and several mini challenge missions. These are exactly what was missing from Frontiers - gone are the repeated themes and assets seen in the Cyberspace missions, and back are the intricately designed stages with plenty of alternate paths with cool set pieces and spectacles that are fun to experience over and over.

Also contributing to my enjoyment of the game are the controls. I already commended Frontiers for having pretty tight controls for Sonic, and these have only been refined further in Shadow Gens. Shadow just feels incredibly easy to control and being able to pull off those reactions and jumps needed to access those alt paths in the stages feels great. It also does away with the overly complex combat system, there are no crazy dodges, parries or combo moves to do, but Shadow does have his Doom Spear and launcher that mixes things up and ties into level traversal too.

In fact, it kind of makes Sonic Generations feel clunky in comparison. The original game has been 'remastered', but very little has changed, besides some rewritten dialogue and some hidden Chao to find in each level. Graphically it looks exactly the same, and the controls remain untouched. This is fine, the game was and still looks and plays great, but Sonic compared to Shadow feels a lot stiffer to control. The way Sonic handles has been refined in the years through Forces and Frontiers, so going back to a game from 11 years ago, packaged with a brand new game, unfortunately makes inevitable comparisons, and playing the two games back to back definitely takes some getting used to.

My main complaint about Shadow Generations is that there just isn't enough of it. Not that it was a short game, it's length is pretty comparable to Sonic Generations and I can see myself replaying more in the future, plus the hub world exploration certainly adds a lot to the experience. I also understand this is a smaller project, designed to be a companion to Sonic Generations and was clearly made to capitalize on the release of the Sonic 3 Movie, but part of me was hoping for something a little more comparible to the 9 levels Sonic Generations has, while Shadow Gens has just 5.

Supposedly Sonic Team are still working on their next game - possibly a follow up to Frontiers. I can only hope that they take the lessons they've learned and build upon them. They already have the framework of additional characters, introduced in the Final Horizons update for Frontiers. They could design a more intricately designed hub world in a similar scope to Shadow Generations, interconnecting fun, tightly designed traditional stages. There's a lot of potential here for the next game, and my hopes for the series haven't been this high since... well... since when Sonic Generations came out, I suppose...

[modeus-the-misanthrope]

My uncle at Dreamworks just showed me this leaked footage of Shrek 9: Spinning back in the Swamp

Naturally I have a source for yall.

[compass-inks]

I recently finished Legend of Dragoon. Really liked it & really liked Miranda.

[lynx-jynx]

Blorgs new track is my favorite thing rn

[ill-have-the-medivel-meal]

Shrek woulda been a different story if he just stood his swamp

[qrevo]

pet peeve: all of the (five at most) mg-tf games out there are twine rpgs that just become a number-go-up game 30mins in. like congrats you're now one quadrillion km tall and can do whatever you want and now there's no challenge or objective whatsoever. what's the fun in that

someone should do like. a mg-tf roguelike. in a real game engine. where becoming too big is a game over. and having to manage different curses and stats and shit. ever thought about that. sigh *rolls up my sleeves*

[saltyfinalboss]

Was playing dead cells earlier and I found the lore room of HoTK, thought I'd let you know that bc you made it happe n (I died before I could reach HoTK though :'0

I'm glad you found it :) thanks for sharing!

[the-crimson]

I just realized cc!bad and cc!Tubbo both made the 600 coin trade knowing both their characters would probably be dead by the 18th so it would never be paid back LMAOOO

[okayxairen]

hat store