#finally been playing some 3d sonic

[maripr]

Turns out Sonic Adventure 1 is actually fantastic and Sonic Adventure 2 is as wonderful as I remember it to be, if not more

[thankskenpenders]

Thoughts on two specific areas of the writing in Sonic X Shadow Generations

The best new 3D Sonic game in over a decade (or even two, depending on who you ask) dropped late last year. And I didn't write anything about it! Sometimes life happens. Well, I've finally sat down to finish Shadow Generations, and by now everyone has already been singing its praises for three months. This is the rare instance where the entire Sonic fandom, and even mainstream reviewers, are in agreement on something. The level design is the best it's been in a long, long time and the cool factor is off the charts, embracing Sonic's peak cringe era in an incredibly confident way. It's great. If you're even reading this post, you probably don't need me to tell you that. So I won't!

No, what I'm really interested in here is the writing. Because this is me we're talking about. But I actually don't want to talk about the main narrative of Shadow Generations, which is really solid little story about Black Doom trying to mold Shadow into his perfect soldier. No, I'd like to zero in on two other aspects of the writing here: the revisions made to Sonic Generations, and Gerald Robotnik's unlockable journal.

The updated Sonic Generations script

The new package mostly presents Sonic Generations how you remember it. There are some tweaks, but it's not a major overhaul. Graphically, I don't think the game has been touched much, if at all. I certainly can't notice any difference without a side-by-side comparison, despite playing it on a PS5. The most notable update is that the game's script has been rewritten by Ian Flynn.

Naturally, this caught my attention. Generations always had a nothingburger story, so with Ian rewriting Pontac and Graff's lame dialogue there was nowhere to go but up. (I don't like to pin the blame for those games' stories entirely on them, as a ton of it was dictated to them by Sonic Team, but, well, I don't think they're very good dialogue writers.) But it's less a complete rewrite and more like Ian was brought on as a script doctor for some minor touch ups here and there. Many lines of dialogue are completely identical to how they were originally written in 2011, and many others only have slight wording changes. Ian was clearly not allowed to request additional scenes or extend the ones that already existed. He has to match the original beat for beat so that they can reuse 99% of the cutscene animations. Don't expect it to be a whole new experience compared to the original.

Still, I think the new script is an improvement, albeit a minor one. Various things have been tweaked to maintain characterization consistency. Cream calls Sonic "Mr. Sonic" instead of just "Sonic." Instead of calling Sonic "buddy," Rouge uses the pet name "Blue," like she tends to do in things like the IDW comics. Espio doesn't have to remind you in the dialogue that he's a ninja, and he no longer has a line making it sound like he has some kind of soul reading power. I also like that Modern Sonic now actually has responses to what his friends say when he rescues them, rather than being silent like Classic Sonic. They won't blow you away, but they make Sonic feel a little more engaged with everything.

In general, the altered dialogue just seems tighter to me, and some of the more childish or trite wording of Pontac and Graff's script has been altered. Here, let's actually make a direct comparison, just because this stuff is interesting to me as a writer. Here's a couple lines from after the Egg Dragoon fight late in the game, in the original script:

Modern Eggman: Ooooh... I can't believe this! I was supposed to beat you this time. Modern Sonic: Aw, I'm sorry! I didn't get that memo. I beat you every time! [Turns to Classic Sonic] No, seriously, we beat this guy every time. It's like it's our job or something!

This is a simple exchange. Eggman is mad that he lost. Sonic is unflappably confident because he always beats Eggman, and he explains this to his younger self. But the wording here isn't particularly good. Eggman's simple and direct wording makes him come off like a little kid who's mad because his older brother beat him at Mario Kart, rather than a mad scientist who just had his plans foiled. It's making light of the situation.

And I've never liked Sonic saying "It's like it's our job or something!" That doesn't feel like a thing Sonic would say, it feels like a thing an outside observer would say about Sonic. This is a frequent problem with so-called "MCU dialogue," where quips meant to echo the commentary of a casual, somewhat disinterested audience are inserted into the story itself so that the writers can be like "See? We get it. We're genre-savvy, too!" It also just reminds me of bad Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric lines like "Rings! It's like they're made for me!"

And then here's Ian's rewrite:

Modern Eggman: I recalibrated everything! This was supposed to be my time! Modern Sonic: Oh, please, keep dreamin', Egg-head. I beat you every time. [Turns to Classic Sonic] No, seriously, we beat him every time. Our score card's flawless.

Eggman's still mad about his defeat, but the line "I recalibrated everything!" makes it more specific. He put all this work into the engineering side of his latest scheme and got tunnel vision, thinking if he got his creations just right there'd be no way he could lose. "This was supposed to be my time!" also turns it into a time travel pun, which is a bonus. He's still pitching a fit over losing, but it feels more like Eggman pitching a fit, rather than sounding childish.

And then instead of saying that beating Eggman is "like his job or something," Sonic says he's got a flawless score card against Eggman. He doesn't take Eggman seriously as a threat—at least, not to his face. He acts like it's all a game. But he conveys this in a way that feels truer to the character, rather than feeling like the words of a real world observer poking fun at the tropes of the Sonic series.

Is this amazing, A+ dialogue that blows me away? No. Again, it's not a completely different scene from the one we already had. Ian had to fit the beats of what was already there. He couldn't go all out and write an all new story confirming his longstanding headcanon that the Time Eater is a remnant of Solaris or whatever. But the wording here makes the existing story land a little better and feel truer to the characters in subtle ways.

But to me, the main change is that the Sonics and Tailses seem to have a more solid understanding of what's going on with the timeline and the Time Eater, compared to how idiotic they sometimes seemed in the original game. Which is good! No more standing outside Green Hill and wondering why it seems so familiar. Thank god. As part of this, yes, there are a few more references to past games in the dialogue, like Sonic briefly being confused about the fact that they're time traveling without the Time Stones, or South Island and Westside Island being acknowledged as the normal locations of Green Hill and Chemical Plant. Yes, ha ha, insert joke about how Ian loves references here. Look, it's Sonic fucking Generations. It's a game built entirely out of nostalgic references. Just own it! And, again, in this instance Sonic and Tails come off as less stupid when they make it clear that they do, in fact, remember their adventures from presumably less than a year ago in-universe.

Eggman, too, seems to have a better understanding of the powers he's toying with. Where in the original vesion his focus was simply on going back in time to undo his previous defeats and he seemed kind of oblivious to how much the Time Eater was actually fucking up the universe, here Eggman says he wants to use the Time Eater to give himself complete control over the entire timeline. Eggman also makes way fewer references to his own failures and shortcomings. Of course he won't admit that Sonic has defeated him time and time again. To him, he's never truly lost—Sonic just keeps delaying the inevitable total victory for the Eggman Empire.

So, yes. The new Sonic Generations script is better. It won't blow anyone away, but it's better than it was. It's been elevated from "kinda lame" to "fine." No, if you really wanna see Ian flex his ability to breathe new life into old Sonic stories, look no further than...

Gerald Robotnik's Journal

Hoo boy.

The story of what happened aboard the ARK has always been... a bit confusing, to say the least. Fans with encyclopedic knowledge of the script for every route of Shadow '05 may disagree, but it's the truth. We've had all the pieces to understand the story for a long time now, but that info was given to us out of order by a pair of unreliable narrators—Gerald, who became a vengeful lunatic shortly before his death, and Shadow, who was subjected to multiple rounds of amnesia and altered memories. Some of the ambiguity left by Sonic Adventure 2 was cleared up in Shadow '05, but that game also retconned in a bunch of new elements to Shadow's backstory (aliens!) that lead to further confusion. Not to mention the fact that that game had multiple routes and only revealed the truth about Shadow if you sat on the ultimate final boss battle for WAY longer than the fight would normally last. Or the fact that Sonic X made its own tweaks in its telling of the story. Or the fact that none of these things ever had the best English translations. I can't blame anyone who hasn't played those games in two decades for not remembering the truth about these characters and getting some details mixed up.

What we needed was something to piece together all of the info we have into one coherent backstory, told in chronological order. And thanks to Shadow Generations, we have that, in the form of an official journal tying together what we knew from Sonic Adventure 2, Shadow '05, and Sonic Battle into the tragic tale of Gerald's rise and fall.

Ian Flynn was the perfect man for the job here as the guy who started his career by tidying up the mess that was the first 159 issues if Archie Sonic. This is what he excels at: taking disparate bits of weird Sonic lore from multiple different sources, boiling them down to their most interesting elements, and connecting it together in a way that will make the audience see the dramatic potential he's always known was there. Rather than feeling like a cynical exercise in franchise building, going back and explaining things that never needed explaining so that people can add more bullet points to the wiki, he puts a new spin on things that retroactively enriches those past stories. The story here means something to the characters involved and gives us a better understanding of them as people, rather than as plot devices to motivate Shadow.

(And, of course, Ian didn't do this journal alone. He wrote the story, but I also have to give a huge shout out to Evan Stanley, who made the final product. All of her handwritten journal entries, sketches, and "photos" included throughout. The physical damage done to the journal over the course of 50 tumultuous years, passing from Gerald to Eggman to a certain special someone at GUN. The way Gerald's handwriting gets less and less legible as his mental state declines. So much love was put into what could have been a mere text dump in a menu, and it really elevates it to the next level. Congrats on officially getting hired by Sega, Evan, you've sure as hell earned it!)

The main idea the journal conveys is that Gerald was under a lot of pressure from a lot of different parties—GUN, the President, his colleagues aboard the ARK, Black Doom, even his own family—and boy did it get to him. The known incidents aboard the ARK mentioned in previous games are put together here to form a story where everything slowly spirals out of control as Gerald keeps compromising his morals to further his research, thinking he'll eventually find some way out of all this because he's a genius. I won't recap that whole story here (if you haven't already played the game and read the journal entries, I would highly recommend at least reading it on the Sonic wiki), but I'd like to highlight my favorite elements of the story, as Ian tells it here.

1) The Eclipse Cannon

Here's something that never quite made sense in Sonic Adventure 2: why does the ARK have a laser that can blow up the Earth built into it? It was supposed to be a peaceful research colony. Sure, Gerald went crazy and swore revenge on the Earth, but, like... when did he have an opportunity to go back up to the ARK and modify it? Did he have someone else do it? How? The ARK was raided by GUN and shut down! And then they arrested him, held him in prison for an unclear period of time, and executed him by firing squad when he was no longer useful! It doesn't add up. Shadow 'the Hedgehog '05 would give its own answer by introducing the Black Arms and saying that the Eclipse Cannon was always supposed to be a secret trump card against the Black Comet. But, like... we know that's kind of a bullshit answer, right? You don't need enough power to blow up a whole planet just to destroy a comet.

Well, the new journal retains what we already knew, but it paints a much more complete picture.

See, long before Gerald ever made a Faustian bargain with Black Doom, he had already made one with an even greater evil: the military. GUN gave Gerald much of the funding for the ARK, Gerald's personal utopian research station in space, but it didn't take long for GUN to start pressuring him to design them weapons. Gerald tried to get GUN off his back by personally contacting the President of the United Federation, and the President gave him an alternative: how about, instead, you just use your genius brain to figure out the secret to immortality for us, so our soldiers can be immortal? Gerald was initially sickened by the notion and found it completely absurd, like chasing a shadow... but given no other option, the sarcastically named Project Shadow soon began in earnest. (Maria would later put a more positive spin on the name after Shadow's awakening, pointing out that a Shadow can show us the direction of the light, like she says in the game itself.)

Of course, this search for the ultimate life form didn't go very well, and without any results on that front GUN kept hounding him for weapons. Gerald would throw them a bone here and there to get them off his back. His research on Chaos resulted in the Artifical Chaos prototypes, which he worried would be used for warfare but could at least theoretically be used for search and rescue missions in floods, in his mind. But that wasn't enough. So he gave them Chaos Drives to power their mechs. And that still wasn't enough. He's got Emerl. He'll give them Emerl. They're not impressed by Emerl. They'll shut the whole ARK down if Gerald doesn't give them something big.

Fine! GUN wants something big? Gerald builds a huge fucking laser cannon into the ARK. However, as a middle finger to GUN, Gerald makes it so powerful that it would destroy the Earth if it was ever fired at any target on its surface. In other words, GUN now has their ultimate weapon of mass destruction, fulfilling his contract, but they can never actually use it. Oh, the delicious irony. (And also Shadow will blow up the Black Comet with it in 50 years yada yada yada.) Is this perhaps extremely shortsighted and naive of Gerald, to believe that such a weapon would never actually be used just because of the risk? Of course. But hey, that's Gerald for you. And I love this as an answer.

(Also, this, uh, kinda echoes something from real life! Remember the bit in Oppenheimer where he says all nuclear war will become unthinkable, and Edward Teller responds "until somebody builds a bigger bomb"? Yeah, Teller went on to conceptualize a superweapon codenamed Project Sundial that would have been able to kill all life on the planet, as the ultimate deterrent for war. This was never made for obvious reasons, but hey, there's a basis for this sort of thinking outside of heightened sci-fi! There's a whole Kurzgesagt video about this if you're interested.)

2) The Biolizard

The Biolizard is, of course, brought up as the initial failed prototype of the ultimate life form, from before Gerald met Black Doom. We don't really learn all that much about it that we didn't already know, but I just love the way it's framed in the story.

As you can see above, we actually get to see a picture of Maria holding up the cute little salamander that would end up mutating into the Biolizard through Gerald's experiments. (Researchers want to figure out how to replicate salamanders' regenerative abilities for humans in real life, too, so this was a natural starting point for the project.) And then, after it grows to a monstrous size and goes out of control, Gerald has to lock it away in an unused sector of the ARK. He needs to keep the poor thing alive for his research into harnessing Chaos Energy, building life support systems directly into it, but he doesn't have the heart to tell Maria what happened. So it just becomes this first dark secret weighing on his conscience. The Biolizard becomes Gerald's Tell-Tale Heart beating beneath the floorboards of the ARK. I love that.

3) Lost Impact was the breaking point for the ARK

Remember the level Lost Impact in Shadow '05? The flashback level on the hero path where Shadow is running around fighting Artificial Chaos enemies on the ARK 50 years ago? Yeah, that wasn't just a random incident. That was important, as we now know due to its placement on the timeline.

See, Emerl's rampage aboard the ARK that was chronicled in Sonic Battle and Dark Beginnings set off a domino effect. Emerl riled up the Artificial Chaos, causing Gerald to lose control of them. They became violent, and so Shadow had to stop them, as depicted in Lost Impact. The thing is, that incident sent an SOS signal to GUN telling them that shit was going down on the ARK. Gerald didsn't fully understand the trouble he was in and assumed that he'd simply be reprimanded by the higher ups, or maybe face legal action. But, well... the next time he heard from GUN, armed troopers were raiding the ARK.

So Lost Impact was the straw that broke the camel's back. I just really like that detail.

4) Maria

And, of course, there's Maria herself. Maria has often been more of a symbol than a character, this perfect embodiment of everything that's good and pure in this world who gets killed to motivate Shadow and Gerald's revenge plots. But I really like the wrinkles this journal adds to her and Gerald's story, and their relationship. This is the most fleshed out they've ever felt.

For one, the journal leans into the idea of Maria's intellectual potential. The rest of the Robotnik family is all geniuses, after all, and she was proving to be a really bright kid. She excelled in her studies on the ARK, and she even helped design Shadow's jet skates and inhibitor rings. When Maria died, the world didn't just lose a symbolic personification of purity. She genuinely could have been a hugely influential scientist who did so much good for the world. That's what Gerald wanted for her. But we'll never know, because GUN killed her.

Speaking of her family, their presence isn't just mentioned for the sake of fleshing out the Robotnik family tree. It's mentioned that as Gerald struggled to find a cure for Maria's illness through his genetic research, he faced mounting pressure from his family. They didn't want Maria to be up on the ARK forever. They wanted Gerald to hurry up and find a damn cure, or otherwise just send her back home to Earth so she could be with her family again. She'd been up on the ARK for so long that Gerald's coworkers started thinking that she had been born up there. Eventually she gains a baby sister on Earth who she's never met. A rift forms between Gerald's two sons, and he's unable to really deal with it because he's so consumed by his work. There's this sense that the family is falling apart, and that everyone is dreading the possibility that Gerald will never find a cure and that Maria will just spend her final years up in space and die far away from her family, because Gerald just couldn't let go. If that happens, it'll break the whole family. But he can't stop now. So he just keeps working. Curing Maria is the only way to win his family back, in his eyes. It can't all be for nothing.

But my favorite detail regarding Maria is this one paragraph:

Maria is growing into a lovely young woman. It breaks my heart that someone as bright and energetic as her is diminished by disease. There are no visible effects, and I've caught my fellow researchers muttering to each other, doubting her illness. It is infuriating. I find all my reason and restraint vanishes when she's slighted.

This is SUCH a great addition to the story! It's always been true that Maria doesn't really seem all that ill, just looking at her in cutscenes. With this one little comment, Ian flips that issue on its head and turns it into a story about invisible disability. She doesn't act like she's in chronic pain, so she must not be, everyone thinks. And this really, really gets to Gerald, as does the pressure from his family. He's dedicating his whole LIFE to saving her, and they think she's faking it?! It's such a small addition, never referenced elsewhere in the journal, but it adds so much flavor to the story, as does the implied family drama. It grounds Gerald and Maria and makes them feel more like real human beings, rather than being pure archetypes. It's just enough info to let my imagination run wild filling in the blanks.

You also get the feeling that Maria being such a walking ray of sunshine was the only real source of joy Gerald had left in his life before Shadow was awakened, and the only thing keeping him from snapping under pressure sooner. All this stuff just keeps piling on, everything's spiraling out of control, but at least Maria is keeping her chin up, right? It makes so much sense that losing her would make him go off the deep end when it's framed like this.

It's just... man, I never thought I'd care so much about Gerald and Maria. But that's the Ian Flynn touch. After years of less than stellar Sonic writing that seemed to be embarrassed of itself, I'm so happy to have new games coming out that fully embrace the history of the series like this, making its world feel so rich and real instead of just serving as an excuse for a string of platforming levels. I don't even like Shadow '05, but I'll be damned if Ian and the rest of Sonic Team didn't make something amazing by "yes, and"-ing Shadow's cringe past here. Sonic has truly reached levels of "we're so back" never thought possible.

[h-worksrambles]

Sonic X Shadow Generations fascinates me. Because it feels like something I shouldn’t be excited for. And yet I absolutely am.

Don’t get me wrong. I love Sonic Generations. It’s my third favourite game in the series and my favourite 3D Sonic game (with Sonic Adventure 2 in a close second). I’m very happy to see it getting a re release to expose it to new audiences, and playing it in 4K60fps on my PS5 is a very enticing. Likewise, I really like Shadow as a character and I’m excited to play as him again.

And yet, his new bonus campaign promises to basically be a bunch of nostalgic pandering for Shadow the Hedgehog, a game which I consider to be, simply put, crap. It was boring, dull, colourless and embarrassing trend chasing. And pretty much everything I hated about it is on display in this trailer.

We’ve got gritty, grey cityscapes, we’ve got the rather blah alien villain, Black Doom returning, we’ve got the looming return of the series’…bafflingly executed lore. In a word, Shadow was a pretty much everything I didn’t want Sonic to be shoved into a blender. I’ve given my thoughts on revisiting past excesses and failures for the sake of nostalgia. I wrote a whole thing about Final Fantasy VII Rebirth and my fears that it would go overboard pandering to the 2000s spin offs (which I dislike a for lot of the same reasons as a lot of Sonic stuff from the mid 2000s). A faux attempt at maturity that sacrifices Sonic’s camp and colour, and lacks the writing competency to make its tone shift work is pretty much my worst case scenario for the series. And now we’re invoking that for nostalgia? Again, I should hate this.

So if I dislike Shadow the Hedgehog so much. If it really is so emblematic of Sonic’s worst excesses that I want it to leave behind in the 2000s…then why am I so damn hyped for this? Why am I not feeling the same dread as whenever VII Remake implicitly threatens to bring back Genesis?

I think it’s because of the specific relationship Sonic has had with its past for the last decade. So much of the stuff from that time period is material that Sega has seemed actively scared to touch again. Sometimes with good reason. But I think that’s why some material from that time has gained such a strong nostalgic cult following, and why they’re held up as such bastions of missed potential. There’s never been anything quite like Shadow or 06 since they came out with how safe Sega has subsequently played things. And in many respects, that’s a good thing. But I can see how it build a sense of mystique around them. It was kind of sad to see 2010s Sonic so…scared of itself. Terrified to invoke its own history but not really committed to a new direction either. And this is pretty much the exact opposite of that hesitancy.

Basically, the reason I react to seeing Westopolis or Black Doom with ‘holy shit let’s go!!!’ rather than ‘why, god, why?’ is because I genuinely never thought I would see them again after this long. It’s just exciting to see Sonic Team throw caution to the wind and embrace all the parts of their franchise. Even the parts I personally dislike. Plus, Sonic Generations is kind of the perfect game in which to reimagine that stuff and make it..actually good this time. This was the game that made Crisis City of all things into a banger level. The game that took Silver, one of the most notorious boss fights in the series, and gave him a kickass encounter.

If they can fix that, they can do anything.

Plus, the fact that the trailers already show all these trippy stage effects and anime af boss fights and set pieces tells me we’re not just gonna be running through the same drab washed out burning cities that made Shadow 2005 so boring. Again, there’s evidently an effort being made to rehabilitate and reimagine this stuff, not just repeat all the same mistakes. And that’s exciting.

So yeah, Sonic X Shadow Generations has somehow managed to get me genuinely excited for all the parts of the series I typically balk at. And that’s pretty impressive.

That said, if I see Mephiles again, I’m leaving.

[starlightseq]

Finally getting back to my Archie Sonic redraw series. Cover #2 of the original miniseries!

Timelapse of this is available on my Bluesky.

Some thoughts on this piece and on this issue below ⤵️

For this piece, I knew I wanted to play a bit w/ dynamic posing or perspective. So I pulled out a perspective grid instead of just winging it and managed to do something I'm pretty happy with! The missile certainly gave me trouble and I still think the perspective there was a little wonky. Maybe using a 3D model would have helped haha.

CSP users, this was the perspective grid I used btb!

It didn't come to me until I was finishing up the piece that it looks more like Sonic is dodging out of the way of the missile rather than running away from it...Oh well! I suppose it can be viewed either way lol

As for the background, I knew I didn't want to do just black lines on pure yellow, so I decided to look to Sonic Mania for inspiration! Particularly the Sonic Mania opening. Mania's OP REALLY nailed the classic sonic aesthetic and low and behold, I found the perfect moment to ref.

(Also they REALLY leaned into the look of Sonic CD's animation style at points in this OP, I've realised haha. Maybe I should too!!!!!)

As for the issue of this comic itself!

I really liked it! I think of the three I've read so far, this issue is my favourite. It was very nice to see Sonic and Antoine have to work together and it was also very nice to see Tails getting some spotlight! Admittedly, I would have preferred Sonic and Antoine have to team up for the entire issue, but ultimately it still is nicely written. It feels like it would have been right at home as an episode of a cartoon. A more AoSTH take on SATAM, I suppose.

Also the humor of them introducing four mystical emeralds as a plot device when those emeralds are Not The Chaos Emeralds has not been lost on me lmao.

The next cover intimidates me a little but also excites me! Because as soon as I finish that one, I'll be able to move on to the Actual series.

[dr-spectre]

I just watched the Shadow Dark Beginnings animation preview and bro.... where do I even begin?

Now listen, I talk about Splatoon 99% of the time here, but you gotta understand something, Sonic was my first love in gaming. Ever since I played the classic games, Unleashed, Heroes, Rush and Rush Adventure. And watching clips from Adventure 1 and 2. I've always been a humongous fan of this franchise. I grew up in the crowd that watched those "I FEEL LIKE A MONSTER" amvs of Sonic the Werehog for f sake. I had a printed out poster of a render from Sonic and the Black Knight on my wall as a kid because I thought it was the coolest thing ever.

So, seeing this series FINALLY go back to actually telling more serious stories while being sincere about it too... man... it makes me so. Damn. HAPPY!!!! Frontiers wasn't a one time thing, the darker and more serious stories are actually gonna stick around now. I think we're finally free from the 2010s where we were stuck with "BALDY NOSEHAIR! THAT'S THE BEST THING IVE HEARD ALL DAY!" For a literal decade.

Us Sonic fans had to go through the 2010s where the series made fun of itself and was all "comedy" and stopped doing the cool serious shit they used to do... it makes me so happy that they are FINALLY diving into things they haven't talked about in over a decade. They aren't scared anymore to show a fucking human in this god damn franchise because a bunch of gaming journalists who dont give a fuck about the series said "humans in sonic are BAD!" They aren't scared to show Maria and something like Emerl. EMERL?!?! FROM SONIC BATTLE?!?!?! THAT'S SO COOL!!! I BARELY PLAYED BATTLE BUT STILL! THATS AWESOME!

Now.... was some of the stuff in the 2000s going way too far? Like Shadow saying "you're going straight to hell" and murdering Dr Eggman in non canon endings. And a human kissing a dead Hedgehog to bring him back? Yeah that's way too far. DOESNT MEAN YOU SHOULD THROW THE BABY OUT WITH THE BATHWATER!!!! Lost World and Forces man. My God. Ugh.

Anyways, yeah I'm so excited and so hopeful for this franchise again. Before Frontiers came out I was so nervous if the game was gonna be good or not and what you may say about the game itself, it did appeal to tons of people and became the highest selling 3D Sonic game of all time, beating out Heroes. I am now actually fully confident and excited for Frontiers 2 or whatever the next game shall be.

People cheering and crying over the stuff that happens in that game AS WELL AS A PREVIEW FOR A SHADOW ANIMATION makes me so.... HGIWIDIDIS WAHHH IM SO HAPPY!!! IM HAPPY!!! SONIC IS BACK!!! SONIC IS FINALLY BACK!!! SHADOW IS BACK!!! BOW YOUR HEADS LOW ALL HAIL SHADOW!!!!

[martinsaenz96us]

R.I.P. LittleBigPlanet

It's been a really sad year for "LittleBigPlanet". First the servers for LBP3 PS4 just shut down (servers for previous entries are also shut down), and not only the digital copy of LBP3 PS4 (digital copies of previous entries have already been delisted), but all the DLCs that's ever been released from LBP1 to LBP3 are being delisted from the PSN store. It really sucks that this once beloved franchise is being butchered to death in favor of bland realistic graphics cinematic games, live service games and catering to the so-called "Modern Audience" (*cough*cough "Concord" *cough*cough*). It's just not right how this franchise has been treated lately. The last game in the franchise "LittleBigPlanet 3" has been released about 10 years ago at this point. All the franchise has going for it now is just a spin-off named "Sackboy: A Big Adventure" released back in 2020, which is nothing like LBP (it's basically "Super Mario 3D World" but LBP themed). Sackboy, a worthy mascot for the "Playstation" brand in the PS3 Era is now gonna be known as Sackboy from "Sackboy: A Big Adventure" (a spin-off mind you) instead of Sackboy from "LittleBigPlanet" (where he's originated from). Sackboy has always been in a special place in my heart growing up, I even used to draw him (besides Sonic) in my journal a lot during high school. Back in junior high I was in special needs because of my autism (I even rode the bus and took field trips with special needs kids). I played a lot of video games and I was also a bad boy (I used to get in trouble a lot by giggling and misbehaving during class). My homeroom teacher had a Wii with "Wii Sports Resort" (great game) and even my all time favorite "Super Smash Bros. Brawl" (better than Melee, change my mind). He would let us play when we were done with our assignments (we even got to stay after school to play and eat pizza in homeroom if we had good behavior). I never knew about LBP at the time and if you've been following me through the years, you know that I've been a big fan of "Sonic the Hedgehog" ever since kindergarten. So when I first heard LBP featured Sonic the Hedgehog costumes as DLC, I immediately wanted to buy the game for that sole reason (the same way I first got into Smash starting with Brawl). I was also into games that would let you create your own character or levels, that factor also drew me closer to wanting LBP and even "ModNation Racers" (rest in peace) too at the time. But I had a PSP instead, I got both LBP both and ModNation on it and I was a bit disappointed. LBP on PSP was my least favorite version, it felt so limited customizing Sackboy (not being able to place stickers on him too was a drawback for me), or customizing in general (ModNation on PSP is in the same bane too). Once I beat it 100% I wanted to start creating a level, and oh boy it all went downhill from there. The options were limited, the game kept crashing at any given time while creating. So needless to say I did not like LBP on PSP at all, and all it did is made me want a PS3 even more that I kept begging my mom to buy one for me. Around maybe my 8th grade year, I finally got a PS3 (I think it was a birthday gift, I can't remember). I became so happy that I immediately bought LBP at "GameStop" (I also bought both LBP2 and ModNation Racers at the same time). Upon booting LBP for the first time I immediately got so hooked. I wanted to beat it 100% but the only drawback was that I only had 1 controller, and there's sections in the game that require 2 to 4 players to get the prize bubbles. I felt kinda let down since I wasn't able to obtain those prize bubbles without multiple controllers, but I some how managed to get through a handful of 2 player sections using only 1 controller (like the "Construction Site"), which took dedication and dying a lot. I was so proud of myself for accomplishing sections that were only meant to be played with 2 people. The other 2 player sections however I wasn't so lucky, so I begged my mom to buy me more controllers, I didn't tell her why thinking she wouldn't agree with me. Then after beating LBP 100% I became obsessed with making costumes for Sackboy and showing them off while playing online, even in LBP2 I did the same thing. LBP2 is easily the best in the whole franchise. During the release of LBP2, the franchise hit it's all-time peak (I got a PS3 soon after the release of LBP2). LBP2 has also the best story mode. They were difficult at times (mostly ACEING all the levels, even in LBP1 it was difficult), but I still had a blast playing through it all. I also 100% the story mode and went on to complete all the level kit DLCs (which I did eventually). Fun Fact: At the time of LBP2's peak, "My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic" was also at it's all time peak (on the internet of all places). So while playing LBP2 I saw a bunch of levels related to MLP I got so annoyed by it. I played one of the levels I came across just for the sake of it, then I became intrigued and wanted to see what the whole fuss was about at the time. So one day I turned my TV to "The Hub" (R.I.P.) and the first episode I've ever watched was "Party of One" (you know, the one that featured Pinkamena who spawned a bunch of creepypastas). After watching the episode, I instantly fell in love with the show. The characters, the art style, everything about the show was so appealing to me. I've always been really really shy IRL, but then "Fluttershy" caught my eye since she's the one I can relate to, so she became my all time favorite pony to this day. I loved MLP so much I even drew ponies in my journals during my freshman year in high school (I was the quiet kid). And that is how I became a Brony. So back on-topic. I made so many memories with this game in particular that I will cherish forever. The community levels was a big step up from it's predecessor. Even when playing community levels online with random people made it so worth while (back when online play was FREE). All in all, LBP2 has become one of my most favorite games of all time. I loved the enjoyment of coming home from school to hop on straight into LBP2 (and also ModNation Racers) to play online with other people. Even one of my cousins enjoyed playing it, and would play together every time he'd come over. During my freshman year in high school, I heard about the PS VITA and I instantly wanted to buy it because LBP was on it. So eventually I got it with LBP (and because I love handheld gaming minus mobile gaming). I played it non stop, even between switching classes I would walk while playing. LBP on PS VITA was also great (not as good as LBP2, but way better than LBP PSP). I really liked it, and with the use of the touch screen and the back trackpad. The story mode was good, I liked how it had a slightly darker tone to it, compared to the previous entries. The characters were wacky and interesting (and some ugly tbh). And just like the previous entries, I 100% it all the way through. Online play was pretty cool too (but very laggy at times) and community levels were kinda good but a bit disappointing (not LBP2 good but it's passable). I also had fun making costumes everywhere I went (I even uploaded some on my DA page). LBP Karting however was OK (not up to LBP2 standards). I played through the story mode and 100% it too. The community levels were actually pretty interesting, there were even remakes of "Mario Kart" tracks that were spot on (but no custom music like LBP2). My biggest complaint however was the inability of customizing costumes like the previous entries (just changing outfits and placing stickers on doesn't cut it either), even the kart creation was barebones. Overall, the game just feels like a blatant rip-off of "ModNation Racers" (despite being made by the same developer "United Front Games" R.I.P.), which had better character and kart customization and you can even download custom made ones by other people and upload your own. LBP Karting does have better track customization however, but that's not saying much. And adding insult to injury, the fact that a full blown "ModNation Racers Sequel" got canceled in favor of LBP Karting is just a big punch in the face from Sony. A ModNation Racers sequel would've been miles better (pun intended) than LBP Karting in my honest opinion. Around probably Junior year, I got a PS4 with "LittleBigPlanet 3". From what I heard however it's been called the worst in the franchise, since the game was rushed to meet sales for Black Friday. So as a result, the game released with many bugs and glitches turning alot of people off from the game altogether (So I guess it's the "Sonic 06" of the LBP franchise). I bought it around maybe a month or 2 after it's release, and from what I played I really haven't experienced any bugs or glitches. In fact I really liked it, it felt more fleshed out and about as good as LBP2. Basically it's LBP2 but more expanded with new playable characters and creative additions such as expanded layers, new gadgets etc. I also liked how you had the ability to play every community levels ever made in both LBP1 & 2. I actually did play LBP3 on my PS3 first, but I then gave away my PS3 to my cousin to buy a PS4 (which I regret doing). What turned me off however wasn't the game itself, it was the fact Sony was charging for online pay (which killed online play for me) despite the fact it used to be free. At the time it costed $60 just for one year of online play, I could buy a full price game from retail then play & keep it for as long as I want. Paying for playing online is just a scam altogether. I did pay for one year just to play LBP3 online, then never payed again because what was the point. I did however registered my cousin's account to my PS4 to play online, so I played LBP3 online again then lost interest since the damage has already been done. Now I can't play it online anymore if I ever wanted to since the online servers recently got shutdown, and yet they still expect us to pay monthly/yearly for this (I did recently hear that Sony not only increased the price but added 3 tiers to pay for. The most expensive tier however is $120 a year, if that doesn't sound like a scam then I don't know what does). And recently I got myself a "Steam Deck" as a personal birthday gift about 2 years ago. Best decision I have ever made, and I would go as far as saying it's way better than the "PS5" (millions of games to play, it's a handheld, it's fully backwards compatible with everything via emulation, and best of all free online play). Lately I've been replaying LBP1 (and ModNation Racers) on a PS3 emulator and immediately fell in love with LBP all over again (although it's not perfect running on the Steam Deck with minor graphical issues and crashing every now and then). I've enjoyed every minute of it just like how I was when I first started played it back then, and now with a custom server is giving me the ability re-live those moments playing community levels and playing online without spending a single penny. Thank you "Media Molecule" for giving us a gem that will forever be in our hearts. Your love and passion that you created has brought joy to all of us around the world and will forever cherish the moments we spent playing your game. And lastly, thank you for giving us the power of playing, creating, and sharing our creations with the world. Rest in peace "LittleBigPlanet", you maybe gone now but will not be forgotten. Here's hoping for "LittleBigPlanet 4" in the near future (if Sony is willing to, and getting their act together) .

Posted using PostyBirb

[diakittyau]

The making of Knuckles' facial expressions in Kuchizuke.

Hi! Today I want to tell you about the making of facial expressions and how difficult it was for me to come to a satisfactory result. ( •̯́ ₃ •̯̀)

Facial expressions have long been one of the most important elements of my work, to which I pay special attention. I really enjoy conveying characters feelings through their facial expressions and body language too. It's been years since I figured the way to work with expressions of certain characters, like Sonic and Rouge for example. It really helps that the models I use have additional shape keys for the eyebrows, which gives me a lot of freedom. When it comes to work with characters faces, I try my very best to be AS FAR as possible from the official Sonic games cutscenes, because they always lack emotions and keep using eyelids to express anger/sadness. They ended up being a good example for me on "how not to do facial expressions". xD

But the hardest for me was Knuckles. The reason is that he has a unique eyes shape not like any other Sonic character. It's a mix between separated eyes, like with Tails, and stylised "one eye" with the brow in the middle, like Sonic's. The brow in the middle of Knuckle's eyes can't be moved, but thankfully it had 2 shape keys for changing its size and smoothing out, that's in addition to another 18 shape keys. And yet, I kept struggling. Knuckles has the narrowed look by default, but it always felt like I just can't make him angry enough, it just wasn't the right amount.

Also, the eyebrows always felt very thin (that's true even for Sonic or other male hedgehogs current 3d models), so around two years ago I started playing a little more with the brow bones so make them more visible. I always wanted characters to have expressions as close as possible to the official 2d artwork, but with those 3d models it seemed impossible.

In comparison, 3d models facial expressions are pretty flat.

And of course, that's not something that can't be done in 3d, as some great 3d artists have shown otherwise. But I am still not as experienced in 3d modeling and by the time I worked on Kuchizuke, making changes to Knuckles' model wasn't my priority, due to having a deadline of 3 months to make a 5 minute long animation. So, I just kept working with what I have and tried to make the impossible. Actually I kinda enjoy doing that, so it's totally fine. xD

So when I got to the scenes with Rouge's true identity reveal, I once again came to the same issue I had before: I can't make Knuckles angry enough. So, out of curiosity, I tried moving the brow bones closer to the center and playing with their scaling. And what do you know? I was finally satisfied with the results! Here you can clearly see the differences. The left side is the final render and the right side is how the expressions would've (presumably) looked had I not tweaked the bones.

It wasn't an easy thing to do, but at least I was very happy with how it turned out.

Then come the scenes with weakness and fight against passing out. I honestly didn't think that I'll be able to make good expressions for this, but ended up surprising myself.

And the last challenge I had, is that in the last scenes I needed to convey both hatred towards Rouge and the weakness from going numb in his expressions.

And I love the result so much, but it was actually really painful to animate him. Like it just pains me to do this to my boy. o(TヘTo)

So in the end I'm glad that I was able to get better at this. I obviously will be making changes in Knuckles' model somewhere in the future for other parts of "Deluding Moonlight", but for what I could have done at the time it turned out very well.

Thanks for reading! Have a great day. ヾ(＾∇＾)

[snowsetdeer]

What a year we've all had! For the first time ever I can post a fully digital, fully completed yearly art round up post. It's been so awesome to see my style change and develop around my interests this year. All of the pieces (and some commentary from me!) will be posted in full under the cut :)

January, Shampoo from Ranma 1/2 (Citrus Shampoo) The doodle that started it all! I was really busy with school starting back up so it's not the most polished piece in the world, but I really love the colors I used and I'm thinking about revisiting this piece in the new year.

February, Krystal from Star Fox (I can just draw anything isn't that amazing) Although this is only a doodle February is the shortest month so...

March, Faye and Falco from Star Fox, Miffy from Miffy (What are they looking at?) I was making a lot of 3D Miffy models and such for one of my classes this month, and I was still super into Star Fox, so I decided to just mix the two together! I really like doing art that puts random characters together like this in my sketchbook, maybe I'll do more crossover pieces next year :)

April, Falco, Peppy, Slippy, Fox, and Krystal's Arm (N64 collab over on Newgrounds) This was my first ever collab, and I'm really glad I pushed myself to join! This is a redraw of one of the covers for Earth Defense Girl Iko Chan, I reference a lot of Iko Chan pictures and media when I'm drawing lol.

May, Sonic the Hedgehog with the Beam Kirby Powerup (submission to the Sonic anniversary collab on Newgrounds) This was another collab, and I wish I had been able to put more detail into the background for the final piece, but the collab only required a clear background png of your assigned character so I really focused in on Sonic.

June, The prince and The King of All Cosmos from Katamari Damacy (LEAKED 2009 DS EXCLUSIVE DATAMINE aka Hold Out Your Hand Son) The beginning of an era. This 20 minute doodle gifted me a ton of creative ideas and passions this year! The Katamari I drew here and the background (a cropped free Katamari wallpaper) are used in almost every single Katamari piece I made this year as a way to tie them all together (and a way to save time!)

July, The Prince from Katamari Damacy [And technically The King but I did not draw him this time lol] (Katamari Kart!) My sister is a competitive Mario Kart player, and while watching her I thought the Prince would be a cool addition to the roster. This was made before I played the We Love Katamari level where The Prince has his little ducky car or else I would have incorporated it here!

⭐August, The Prince and The King of All Cosmos from Katamari Damacy (Katamari Creation) Side note this is my best performing piece, and I'm so glad I decided to make it!!! It is a redraw of a guy pretending to be a wizard by floating an apple between his hands. I was originally going to draw the prince hiding between the apple slices when you find him in We Love Katamari, but decided that the hands were impressive enough that I could reuse my own Katamari lol.

September, The Queen of All Cosmos from Katamari Damacy (Selfie trend) There was a trend on twitter where a cosplayer put her phone over her face to show the character, and I thought that was so cute I just had to do it with The Queen. I made this to be my pfp on here, but just wasn't quite satisfied with it (it was literally my first digital drawing of the Queen ever lol) SO-

October, The Prince, The Queen, and The King of All Cosmos from Katamari Damacy (He likes to feel tall) This is my actual current profile picture! It was originally made for both here and discord, but discord's circular crop completely removes the King from the picture whoops. I'm really proud of the King's hand and the subtle glow around The Prince to draw the viewer's eye to him, took a lot of trial and error to get both of them just right lol.

November, Ulala from Space Channel 5 (She's Stardust Chic,,,) November I actually had 2 pieces made, but this is the one I intended to be my big monthly piece. I got back into Space Chanel 5 something fierce over the course of the month, and I made so many of my friends play it with me lol.

December, The Queen and The King of All Cosmos (and the Prince really tiny!) from Katamari Damacy (Katamari Christmas) And now we're done! My most recent piece, inspired by family photos turned into Christmas Cards. I also really liked drawing the King and the Queen being cozy. The King's longer hair and more scruffy beard was really fun to play around with too. That's all from me this year! I grew a lot as an artist, but also a friend, mentor, student, and researcher too! I achieved a ton this year, and I can't wait to hit the ground running next year Now it is time for my once yearly "I'm putting one million tags to boost my views and engagement" giant tags section lol

[doyoulikethisanimesong-poll]

Hello! A pretty random question, but I’m curious.

I saw you answered some asks about which songs you discovered & liked thanks to the polls, but have you discovered any anime that you decided to watch through the polls as well? I mean, did you ever look at a submission, did some basic checks, glanced at the synopsis and went “huh this looks interesting, might give it a watch” or the likes? Or do you focus on the music only and don’t check the synopsis at all (which would be understandable, with how many songs are coming in)?

Have a good timezone!

I don't really check the synopsis at all however there are a couple anime that I've got on a list because I thought the songs fucked so hard that I just had to try them out. Devilman no Uta finally got me to sit down and atleast try out Devilman Crybaby after ignoring it for years and I'm really enjoying what I've seen so far. I was a bit iffy on the style at first but after a couple episodes, I just couldn't help but adore it. I'm hoping to finish it up in the next week or two when I get some free time where I want to watch stuff.

The other big one is actually Gundam as a whole. I'd watched Mobile Suit Gundam 79 a couple years back and watched a few episodes of Zeta but I was really struggling with Kamielle so I put the series down in hopes that I'd come back to it later but after hearing a bunch of songs from the later series, I decided to bite the bullet and watch more Zeta. I'm about half way through now and also decided to binge all of Witch from Mercury in one sitting which I adored. I knew WfM was a banger of a series but its the first time in a long while that an anime has gripped me so hard. I think my only really complaint is the fact that someone in production obviously really wanted to try and make the relationship ambigious so they can claim "they were just friends" which is a tad frustrating.

Another fun one that I just remembered is Sonic. The Sonic X submission got me playing the Sonic games again. I had been doing a full playthrough of all the Sonic games in release order and at the time of that submission, I had gotten through the 90's 2D games but hadn't started Adventure 1 yet and was just a bit burnt out. But since that submission, I have gotten through all the "main" 3D games from the 90's and 00's (except the Riders series which I will be checking out at a later date). My most recent completion was Colors which I enjoyed the gameplay of but dear god was the story a complete shitshow. I remember enjoying it so much more as a kid. I'm now alternating between Lost World and Forces (haven't started Forces yet but I have a few hours today where I'm gonna sharescreen with my friend and see if I can finish it in one session).

[miloscat]

[Review] Sonic Lost World (3DS)

The better Lost World?!

Dimps made some of my favourite Sonic games: Advance 2, Rush, Rush Adventure, Generations 3DS... not only have I now played them all, their handheld companion version of Lost World is the final Sonic game they've developed. And they went out swinging, because this dinky SD game shows up Sonic Team's console effort in many ways.

As with Unleashed, this version shares much with the higher-spec console game: the soundtrack, visual design, cutscenes (albeit crunched to 240p, and some have been removed). Broadly speaking the concepts are carried over as well, but a shift in focus and some gameplay tweaks make this a more playable and enjoyable experience.

For a start, there’s still a run button but Sonic runs faster by default and conserves more momentum. The homing attack is streamlined: back on the jump button where it belongs, and the kick is replaced by an arc projectile with a more clear situational use against strong enemies. Wallrunning and climbing are more useful and easier to maintain due to a mechanic that lets you extend them with a spin. The spin dash has slightly more use too but that’s more down to level design, which I also find more engaging.

Compared to the Wii U version, this game is more like a puzzle platformer. There’s still plenty of running fast and the platforming is challenging and involved, but they pack in a lot more interaction in these dense levels. Elemental shields are now given in levels rather than through the inventory system, and used to open alternate paths by protecting you from hazards. Wisps are also utilised better (including a few exclusive to this version) with some extended sequences that require and explore their powers.

Even the helper feature is implemented better here. Instead of simply whisking you ahead in the level, dying a few too many times offers you a relevant power-up like one that auto-attacks enemies, makes you intangible to damage, or gives you higher and floatier jumps. This version also actually has special stages which give a motivation for grabbing and hanging onto rings until the level’s end. They play out with Sonic flying in 3D space and are very gyro-heavy which was troublesome and made me dizzy at times but they’re a nice novelty.

I do have issues with some other choices. Taking a page from Colours, Wisps are now unlockable and so some can’t be used on your first run through a level. Gyro is now non-optional for some sequences including certain boss fights and Wisp powers. There’s also a tacked on crafting system where Tails can make you items from materials gathered by playing levels, but it’s entirely ignorable. The Streetpass feature sort of plays into this; people send you their best runs of individual levels (which you are now ranked for) and you have to beat them for the reward of more materials. Having cut the side missions and minigames I found I didn’t miss them but these replacements aren’t much better.

Although the Zeti remain boring, with lazy and stupid designs, they at least have slightly less of a presence here. On Wii U they would talk at you sometimes during gameplay, displaying more of their shallow and broad “personalities”, and have two boss fights tacked onto levels per world. Here not only are their fights improved but they’re relegated to a boss fight act. This means there’s fewer levels overall but it’s worth the compromise. The final lava world is also nothing but a boss rush, a slightly underwhelming change although I suppose it gives a more climactic feel.

With Unleashed and again here, I’m glad my completionist tendencies prompted a look at these alternate versions because in both cases I prefer them to the leading HD iteration! Dimps did a great job especially considering the 3DS’s weaker hardware necessitated cutbacks on the scope. In fact that just makes Lost World 3DS more focused and streamlined, on top of the improved controls and puzzley tendencies. They even did the gravity gimmick better here, I reckon! I hope Dimps gets another chance with Sonic at some point but if not they at least have a strong legacy, and this is a fine way to cap it off.

[rapidlydecayingcorpse]

ok EPIC i will send this in a separate ask i guess. a couple categories depending on what's more up your alley

2d games: sonic mania is a good starting point i think, also the original trilogy (particularly 2 and 3&k) (you COULD play them through origins which would also let you play as amy!!! but origins isn't the best so. probably go for an alternative)

3d games: there's been different kinds of 3d sonic gameplay over the years sooo:

sonic adventure 1 and 2 are both good albeit kinda janky. haven't played much of 1 but can attest that 2 is fun and also has shadow the hedgehog

(pro tip: most sonic games range from kinda janky to mega janky)

i personally love sonic colors (the wii version) which is boost style gameplay. i believe it's one of the better 3d sonics tho by no means perfect

sonic unleashed just got a rly good pc port and also has mods to play as transfem sonic and. donkey kong lol

i wouldn't suggest playing sonic and the black knight for a few reasons (namely jank) BUT lorewise it's quite popular in the sonic fandom so watching the cutscenes would be cool. shadow is lancelot isnt that epic sauce

sonic x shadow generations is fantastic!! combo of sonic generations (which is a solid game and has a mix of 2d and 3d style gameplay) and shadow generations which is one of my favorite games of all time. also one of the least janky

sonic 06 also has a pc port/sorta remake called project 06 which is probably the best way to play it because 06 is notoriously buggy. even though it doesn't actually canonically happen it does introduce silver and has rly good shadow characterization

sonic heroes is also pretty important lorewise so play it or watch the cutscenes or something idk. it has neo metal in it <3

and finally for games play the murder of sonic the hedgehog because it's good and fun and free on steam 👍 barry the quokka my beloved

anyway moving on to other media

shows:

sonic prime doesn't have the best writing but i think it's pretty good and it also has good shadow characterization. also it's really fucking gay

there's also sonic boom which is episodic and i got bored after 1 episode ngl. the youtube compilations of funny moments are the best parts of that show

finally sonic underground which i haven't seen and is an older cartoon but is apparently really good

comics:

idw is the most accessible bc it only has 77 issues so far + specials and annuals however characterization is variable.... amy and silver are great but shadow SUUUUCKS

the dc crossover only has 1 issue out so far and it's not perfect but it's pretty fun. batman immediately clocks shadow as having seen a loved one die in front of him which is hilarious

archie is a hellish maze there's so many issues and overlapping side series with the main comic and you have to deal with ken penders echidna bullshit so not recommended unless you're in really deep like me

and then fleetway idk anything about i havent gotten there yet. it's british and amy is a butch who wears a kilt and uses a crossbow

also some games have tie-in comics like frontiers and. team sonic racing for some reason

movies: personally. i do not like the movies. primarily because paramount is a piece of shit but there are several other reasons i can elaborate on if you really wanna know

youtube stuff:

a bunch of the games have tie-in animated shorts on youtube (frontiers, shadow gens, colors, and mania and maybe some others im forgetting) which are all good and have amazing animation. shadow generations dark beginnings and the sonic mania adventures shorts are my personal favorites

chao in space bcus it's adorable. in a similar vein the first episode of chao tales came out today which i am going to go watch right after i finish writing this ask

twitter takeovers because it's fun to hear the characters talk about random shit. shadow agrees to marry a fan. it's great

tailstube if you like little lore bits and character interactions in general

shit this got long oops. ok uh final other things..... sonic rush and sonic rivals duologies are important lorewise (canon introductions of blaze and silver respectively) so watch the cutscenes or smth if you want idk. and uhhhh yeah. ill probably think of other things once i send this ask but it's already ungodly long oops

god damn tysm ill be honest when i said i didnt know shit abt sonic i lied a little. ive seen all of snapcube’s dubs. which still pretty much means i dont know shit abt sonic. but thank u so much this is sick af ill let u know if i play slash watch anything !!

[itssovero]

13. Sonic Generations: White Spacetime (Sonic Team, 2011)

Released outside of Japan as simply Sonic Generations, this anniversary title revisits numerous recognizable locations from previous Sonic titles. Gameplay is split between two playable characters and two gameplay styles: stages featuring the Sonic of the present return to the high-speed rhythmic platforming formula seen in Sonic Unleashed and Sonic Colors prior, while a time-traveling Sonic of the past represents an attempt to recreate the gameplay style of the original slate of tentpole Sonic titles released in the 1990s.

While heralded as one of the best Sonic titles ever released by many, I can't help but feel like this one is somewhat watered down by the same issues that plagued other 2010s-era Sonic titles. Granted, the damage isn't nearly as prevalent here as it is in something like Sonic Forces or even Sonic Colors, but evidence of the degradation of the era is still there, and it makes for an experience which I find to be... just okay.

Modern Sonic's stages are generally serviceable, though in true 2010s Sonic fashion, navigating in 3D feels somewhat stiff and cumbersome. The level design tends to sidestep this issue by avoiding situations where fine movement is strictly necessary (usually by being very hallway-like), but it feels like a band-aid solution to a fundamental issue. It's not so prevalent an issue that it begs the question of why there are 3D sections at all (unlike Sonic Colors a few years before and Sonic Forces a handful of years after), but it's not ideal either. Speaking of level design, it feels like the optimal-path shortcuts (usually a reward for skilled play in the franchise) are often so easy to access and skip so much of the stage (even skipping over a few arguably memorable setpieces) that it makes the shorter stages which comprise the first half of the game feel pretty unsubstantial, and not in a gratifying "I'm good at this" way. I distinctly remember feeling so underwhelmed by my first playthrough of Generations as a young teenager that I would re-enter Modern Sonic's stages and purposefully take the least optimal routes just to feel like I actually got to spend any amount of time in these iconic locations, and that feeling sadly still lingered upon my revisit (excluding the final proper zone, Planet Wisp, which vastly overstays its welcome, ironically).

Meanwhile, the gameplay of Sonic's younger counterpart feels... compromised. Rather than accurately recreating the more granular, physics-y movement of the franchise's iconic 90s output, Classic Sonic feels like a wonkier, more fidgety version of Modern Sonic, with a wildly overpowered spindash taking the place of the boost ability. The implementation feels more superficial than anything, and I can't help but feel like the resources spent on Classic Sonic's stages would have been better spent on designing a second set of boost stages instead, as the tradeoff just isn't worth it, in my opinion.

Much like Colors before it, Generations is very bare-bones in its structure; you have your standard stages, a handful of short challenges set within modified versions of those stages (the quality of which vary wildly), and a few basic boss encounters, strung together with a barren side-scrolling hub which functions as little more than a glorified level select. Combined with a nonexistent narrative, the lack of connective tissue feels like a missed opportunity. 2024's companion title Shadow Generations would handle these aspects far better, with an engaging 3D hub world packed with collectables and small challenges, as well as a simple but emotionally-resonant narrative propelling you forward.

There are a few more features at play; a skill system a-la Sonic and the Secret Rings provides some perks and a splash of moveset customization, but they aren't usable in challenges due to their more gimmick-based design, and many of them require you to collect all red star rings in a given stage to unlock, meaning that you'll have experienced pretty much everything the game has to offer before you have the opportunity to really play around with the system, leaving it feeling like a bit of an afterthought.

Also, because I would be remiss if I didn't mention it; the final boss is straight-up unfinished. You stick to the 3D track and hold the boost button and drift around aimlessly for a few minutes until the game eventually lets you win. Switching to the 2D track will just stall you out. It's bad.

The 2024 rerelease is virtually identical; the only major differences being a new English dub with a very light reworking of the game's very brief script and a few minor cutscene tweaks in an effort to reel in the 2010s era's odd characterizations and memory hole continuity issues, and a handful of new collectables in the form of Chao waiting to be rescued in each main stage (though there's no extrinsic reward for finding them).

I enjoy the idea of Sonic Generations more than I enjoy the actual product. It's not bad by any means, but I don't love it either. I can't help but suspect that much of the "best in series" veneration this game receives from the general public is derived more from its surface-level fanservice than the actual quality of its design or the breadth of its content. I guess what I'm trying to say is that I think it's mid.

[thankskenpenders]

So I wrote a whole long thing about Amy's tarot cards, but what about, you know... the rest of the Sonic Frontiers DLC? The new alternate story route, the hours of new gameplay, all that?

Having now played it, I'm not sure Sonic has ever had this specific combination of good ideas that make the future of the series look bright, and execution that I fucking hate.

(Full spoilers ahead.)

The good

There's a lot to like here, conceptually.

First and foremost, Tails, Knuckles, and Amy are finally playable in a new mainline 3D Sonic game for the first time since 2006! Seventeen years! We've been begging for this for so very, very long. Nature is finally truly healing from the fallout of Sonic '06. Early on I hedged my bets and expected them to be locked to Cyber Space or something like that, assuming that there was no way they'd be fully playable in the Open Zone. But sure enough, while they're a bit limited compared to Sonic, they're still all full-blown characters with skill trees to unlock and lots of exploration to do.

We also got a more bombastic alternate final boss fight, after the first take on The End kind of underwhelmed. And it's obvious that Sonic Team has listened to our pleas to focus on the 3D platforming over the forced 2D sections, and to reduce the amount of automation in the level design. This update is chock full of Actual Platforming. Wow! I can only pray this means we never get an area as agonizing to explore as Chaos Island again.

Sure, there's still some jank - especially with Knuckles' movement, which is kinda rough. But if this is the stuff they're trying out so that they can refine it further for the next game, then I'm really excited.

On the other hand, good fucking lord is The Final Horizon tedious. And that tedium sapped most of the fun out of it for me.

The frustrating

The new scenario massively increases the difficulty over the base game, seemingly out of a desire to give the hardcore players who were posting speedrun videos and whatnot more of a challenge. It's the Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels of Sonic. This difficulty comes in many forms throughout your playtime, some worse than others, and continues to ramp up over time.

Rather than giving you a tutorial level, the new scenario dumps you directly into a remixed version of the final island and makes you do some fairly precise platforming with Amy, Knuckles, and Tails - new characters with new movesets that you won't have any experience with. You'll also need to find character-specific Koco that give you free levels, because Sonic's friends all start at level one and certain locked moves in their skill trees will be mandatory to progress. They don't even have Cyloop unlocked at the start. And because they're all low level, that means you'd better steer clear of the beefed-up bosses scattered around the map, which will absolutely annihilate Sonic's friends. (I honestly just avoided them and never bothered beating any of them, not even with my high-level Sonic. I have no idea if they're beatable with the others.)

None of this is explained to you particularly well. I spent my first few minutes with Amy wondering why the attack button did nothing, only to eventually think to check her skill tree and realize that I had to unlock her basic attack. If you don't bother to take the time to read through the skill trees, you'll very quickly find obstacles you have no way of getting past with no clues as to what exactly you're supposed to do.

Adding to this confusion is the fact that objective markers often tell you to go half a kilometer into the sky, and you'll have no idea how to get up there because all of the relevant platforms are out of your draw distance. Many objects seem to only pop in for me when I'm within about 60 meters of them, which isn't a long distance for a high-speed open world platformer like this. I was having this problem running the game with high graphics on PC, so I can only imagine how obnoxious it is on Switch. I'd frequently find myself poking around nearby clusters of platforming objects and praying that they'd lead me to a spring, rail, or cannon that would eventually point me in the direction of the floating objective marker.

There were always complaints about the art direction in Frontiers and the way it relies on floating rails and prefab platforms that are visually disconnected from the natural scenery of the islands, but it's even more dire here. The new platforming sections are dense and complex, but they seemingly didn't have the budget to change the topography of Ouranos Island at all, so it all takes the form of these prefabs. It very strongly gives the vibe of a Forge creation in Halo 3, back when there were no blank canvas maps and people just had to make "new maps" by jamming a bunch of shipping containers and barricades together in the sky above one of the default arenas.

I was still more or less having fun, though, despite the jank. It's a big creative swing, I told myself! They're trying stuff out! They're experimenting!

And then I hit the towers.

The towers are agonizing because they're SO close to being great. The logical part of my brain understands why some people love them, but god, I just fucking hate them. The platforming there IS cool! These layouts are cool! The individual challenges along the way are a bit tough, but totally doable. You know what's not cool? Making one mistake and slowly falling 800 meters all the way back down to the ground, forcing you to start over. Because none of these towers have checkpoints. For me, this one decision transforms what should have been a fun set of platforming challenges into a massive, unfun difficulty spike.

I enjoy some masocore platformers, but those are typically games with quick deaths and restarts like Celeste, Super Meat Boy, or VVVVVV. Hell, the Mario games tend to get way more difficult than the average Sonic game, and those are obviously all great. Quite frankly, unlike those games, Sonic Frontiers is nowhere near tight or polished enough to make this difficulty feel fair. Bits of jank that I could ignore in the base game due to its lower difficulty are now matters of life or death. Missing a jump because I boosted off an incline in a way the game didn't like for reasons I don't understand is not fun. Falling off a tower because the camera was pointing in the wrong direction while I was in midair and I couldn't see the next thing I was expected to homing attack is not fun.

And it's such a jarring spike when moving from the base game to the DLC that it feels like the game is suddenly quizzing me on skills it never bothered to instill in me. Maybe if you've spent the last year labbing out the movement tech in this game this is all a no brainer, but for the average returning player it's a kick in the dick.

I'm sure I could've beaten these towers normally if I gave them enough tries. They aren't the hardest thing in the world. But I very quickly decided I had better things to do with my life and turned on easy mode, which adds tons of extra springs and homing attack balloons to make all of the platforming piss easy. I wish there was a middle option between Only Up: Sonic Edition and this extreme hand holding, but when given the choice between the two I gladly picked baby mode. I just wanted to see the story.

(The new Cyber Space levels are also long, challenging, and devoid of checkpoints, not unlike the towers. But I only ever found the entrances to two of them. So I only did two. They're theoretically required, because they give you "Lookout Koco" that you need for... some reason? But in a rare act of mercy, Sonic Team put Cyloop treasure spots that give you free Lookout Koco all over the map.)

As I continued, so many little things started adding up to piss me off. Why do you only reveal like five tiny squares of the map at a time? I would've loved to find all the new 1-on-1 dialogue scenes, but not if I had to do dozens of hard mode versions of the stupid little puzzles and challenges to reveal the whole map. Why does every character need their own unique collectibles? What is this, Donkey Kong 64? Why can't I just grab this EXP for Amy when I find it as Tails? Why can I only manually swap characters by talking to an out-of-the-way NPC unlocked right before the final boss? Why is fast travel disabled? Why are the new vocal themes you hear when playing as Amy, Knuckles, and Tails so monotonous, with a single verse repeating over lo-fi beats ad nauseum? Why is the jukebox feature completely disabled throughout the DLC, even after rolling the credits? Why can't Tails homing attack? Why do I have to wrestle with the camera so much while also holding the jump button to fly as Knuckles and Tails? How many right thumbs do they think I have? Why is this animation for picking up animals in the Cyber Space levels so incredibly slow, and why can I still take damage while it's playing? Why does the stupid starfall event have to make it so hard to see what I'm doing when climbing these towers? Why does this shitty combat trial have a popup that makes it seem like I should be using the Cyloop when the actual strategy revolves around repeated parries? And on and on and on...

The story

What about the new story? Well, there sadly isn't much to chew on here. Most of the DLC has the cast running around and finding different macguffins for arbitrary reasons, as part of some sort of plan to divide up the work on the last island so that Sonic can go train with the spirits of the Ancients and harness the power of his cyber corruption. What the fuck is an Impact Form? I don't know, but Knuckles needs something to do, so go find one.

It's a thin excuse plot meant to make you do platforming challenges around Ouranos Island, with little room for Ian to add any real flavor of his own, even though he certainly tries. Having Sonic meet the spirits of the Ancients who controlled the Titans, who are revealed to directly parallel the personalities of him and his friends, is kinda neat, I guess? It's something. The optional conversations seem to have some fun bits, including both conversations between the supporting cast and additional lore. But again, I only found a few of those because of how tedious filling out the map was.

The writing is also let down by the voice acting - or I guess the voice direction, because I know this cast can do better. Roger's voice continues to be weirdly, distractingly deep as Sonic, which was clearly something that was requested of him just for this game. (For a recent example of him going back to his regular Sonic voice, see this LEGO trailer.) The performances of Sonic's friends are also WILDLY mismatched. This is most clear when they start feeling the effects of the cyber corruption. Knuckles seems to be barely affected at all, Tails sounds like he's moderately hurt and low on energy, and Amy starts completely overselling her pain out of nowhere. The extremely strained performance makes it sound like Cindy's literally being tortured in the fucking booth. I have no idea what's going on over there.

The final challenges

People have debated whether or not things like the towers and the new Cyber Space levels are fair challenges. What's not up for debate is the fact that Master King Koco's Trial is complete and utter bullshit, and I can't believe they shipped this.

Before you can fight the new final boss, the game forces you to do a boss rush of the first three Titans - INCLUDING the pre-Super Sonic climbing sections - with a hard limit of 400 rings. For all three lengthy, heavily scripted fights. Back to back. You can't even cheese it with the leveling system, because you're forced to do this at level 1. This all but forces you to look up speedrun strats for the Super Sonic fights so that you don't run out of rings and fail the trial.

And the real kicker? They changed the parry just for this trial! Originally, you could just hold down the bumpers endlessly and Sonic would ready himself to parry the next attack, whenever that may hit. Now it requires you to do a "Perfect Parry" with specific timing. And you HAVE to hit those parries if you wanna clear this trial and get to the new ending. Miss a few and you're probably fucked. You just have to reset. Time to go through all those fights, all those climbing sequences, all those QTEs, and all those unskippable mid-fight cutscenes all over again. This is by far the most egregious example of the DLC deciding to quiz you on new skills that the base game never required of you, and it's one of the most absurdly unfair things I have ever seen in a Sonic game.

Easy mode does make this trial easier by making the timing window for Perfect Parries much more generous, but that's all the help you get. It's still easy to lose time failing to parry Wyvern's hard-to-read animations, or to lose rings by getting hit on the climb sections, or for things to just fuck up because these fights were always kinda jank. I gave it a few shots. I looked up guide videos. I tried the Quick Cyloop and stomp combo strat that seems all but mandatory. But I quickly decided that, again, this wasn't a worthwhile use of my time. It just sucks. And I really, REALLY didn't want to overwrite all my fond memories of these Titan fights, some of my favorite setpiece moments in any Sonic game, with memories of this shit ass boss rush.

So I cheated! And if you're on PC, you should too.

With the worst hurdle out of the way, I turned cheats back off and moved on to the new final boss. It was pretty cool. It's much flashier than the original fight against The End, that's for sure. It's still kinda annoying, and it requires you to do very specific shit without properly telegraphing it, but it's nowhere near as bad as the preceding challenges. I was hoping for one last new metalcore song to go with the new fight, which we sadly didn't get, but at least the new version of I'm Here is good.

The ending is... mostly the same, with a couple altered scenes that don't really change anything in the long run. But overall the new finale was pretty good. I just wish it hadn't been such a slog to get there.

Closing thoughts

Sonic Frontiers: The Final Horizon wants to be three things:

A patch that adds a new alternate ending that was probably supposed to be in the base game in the first place.

An experimental take on making Tails, Knuckles, and Amy playable again, presumably testing things for the next game. And...

An official Kaizo Sonic Frontiers mod for the sickos.

The thing is, the people showing up for #1 and #2, the main things that Sega hyped up about the update, are not necessarily going to be down for #3. If they had announced some uber-hard new Cyber Space levels for the arcade mode or whatever, I'd be like, neat! And then not play them. I would never touch Master King Koco's Trial if it was an optional challenge. I would leave that for the sickos. But instead, they made the hardest content mandatory for anyone who wants to see the new Good Ending where the final boss gets an actual budget.

I'm mostly left in a state of shock that it shipped like this. I cannot believe they playtested this and decided this was the state The Final Horizon should be released in. That this should be the note Frontiers ends on. That this should be how we remember those Titan fights. That this should be the lingering taste in our mouths as we wait however many years for the next 3D game.

Armchair devs always love to say that things would be "easy to fix," but like... there really would be easy fixes for the insane difficulty and general tedium here! Add a few more tutorial popups explaining what the game expects of you with Sonic's friends. Give the Cyber Space stages and the towers a couple checkpoints. Give the combat trials more generous time limits, especially on the lower difficulties. Remove half of the map puzzles, and make the ones that remain uncover twice as many squares. Skip the startup animation for Knuckles' glide. Let me turn on the goddamn jukebox. Since so much of this update was designed around fan feedback, I can only pray that Sonic Team is still listening, and that they tweak at least a few of these things with a balance patch.

But still, after those many, many paragraphs of complaining... this still somehow makes the future of 3D Sonic seem pretty promising?

Sonic's friends are FINALLY playable again, and the focus is back to proper 3D platforming, rather than railroading players into awkward forced 2D sections in what's otherwise an open world. These are the things that they hopefully want to carry over to the next game. The difficulty? Well, that's just because it's the postgame DLC that's supposed to be the toughest challenge in the game. It's just an unreasonably cruel one of those - an example of how designing and balancing for a vocal minority of your fanbase can really hurt your game. But Sonic Team is onto something here, and I hope that they can learn the right lessons from this expansion and not throw the baby out with the bathwater.

[semi-sketchy]

That...was it?

I mean, yeah, I probably should've expected it to end in a "adventure continues in SXSG" but that was very abrupt.

GUN, Rouge and Omega know there's something big coming, but just fuck off after this? There's no glimpse of what awaits Shadow? No real cliffhanger, it just stops? This wasn't satisfying.

It started with "Black Doom might be back I have to get to the ARK" and ended with "Black Doom might be back I'm on my way to the ARK." I stopped to look at the timer near the end because I was like "wait it's just gonna end here? We watched a travel animation?"

Maybe this is because I haven't been following SXSG super closely, but I don't understand how Shadow's campaign is going to start so I have no context for how this leads into the game. That's probably partly why it feels so abrupt right now.

I liked the music and action scenes, though I thought some lines should've been cut.

Like this is pretty obvious, but it keeps going.

The scene would've been better had this line been cut. Same thing happens in part 2.

Sometimes, silence speaks volumes. But of course, everything needs to be "spelled out" though that's an issue with the Maria scenes in general.

Man this shot of Shadow though with that music swelling, holy cow.

Hits you in the feels.

Overall though, it was okay!

My biggest compliment really goes to the sound design. I just love how the music and sound effects come together. Also really enjoy how snappy the animation is. By part 3 I definitely was able to tell I was looking at 3D models, but honestly I don't really care which medium it is as long as it's done well. This looked good!

Writing wise, I think part 1 was the worst and that's due to the stiff, on-the-nose interactions between Shadow and Maria (plus the slip-in of "low-gravity remission"). I definitely preferred the action scenes and interactions with Rouge, sadly Omega was just kinda there in the corner like "I CALL DIBS" and didn't contribute anything noteworthy.

I said this about Xenoblade 3 and it rings true here: this felt like watching a draft rather than a finished script. Some parts are cooked and others are raw. If Omega had nothing to do but blow a few things up in the background, why was he here? Even Shadow was the one to take down the GUN ship Omega originally engaged. Give him a bigger purpose or cut him.

The Maria scenes play out the most like a draft, something you'd write to get the basics of what you want the characters to convey before going back over and replacing those lines with actual dialogue. (This is something I do if I'm struggling.)

Now do I really care that the GUN Commander got his Archie name? No. Of all the things in this animation, Sonic Twitter picked the stupidest one to blow up about. I think the "low gravity remission" and Shadow knowing he's part alien is an actual issue. (Although I guess this could be argued since in ShTH he still had amnesia, he wouldn't remember so this wouldn't matter. Still, wasn't it supposed to be a secret? The Commander only found out by accident?)

Some things just aren't as well thought-out as others, which cements my thought that this script needed polishing.

All that said, this is the biggest promo animation project we've seen in Sonic yet and it's quite different from others before it. I don't think I'd call it "the best", I think the Frontiers one was super cool, but it also didn't have the run-time of Dark Beginnings. Like with XC3: Future Redeemed, it simply didn't have the time to screw stuff up as much.

There's good, there's ehh, so overall Dark Beginnings was just okay for me.

My biggest disappointment is still the fact that this animation simply wasn't what I wanted, which isn't its fault. I saw the teaser of Shadow and Maria on the ARK, I thought it was going to be about them on the ARK and it ended up just being about Shadow traveling to space. I wanted and was expecting something this animation was never going to be.

I guess we'll find out soon how the final game handles Shadow's story, though if this animation is anything to go off of, I'm keeping my expectations in check.

[channeleven]

LTA: Battle for Bikini Bottom Rehydrated.

SpongeBob SquarePants Battle for Bikini Bottom is one of many underdog 3D platformers. When it comes to licensed games there is a low expectation to be met let's face it. The best licensed games, least at the time, showed that you could do a whole lot more with a license, BfBB felt like a legit platformer and its reputation could not be understated.

About the only negative thing I could say about it was that Mrs. Puff knew Patrick by name. Just wanted to put that out there.

Anyhow, to show how beloved BfBB became, it achieved what few other licensed titles could. A second life on modern (at the time) consoles. This came about after the game's publisher THQ was resurrected, sorta, as THQ Nordic, and they were looking to go through IPs under their control. Perhaps starting small or with something that already has an audience is the best way to go. While something like Super Mario 3D AllStars where it was essentially a glorified emulator for 3D Mario titles, or Sonic Adventure DX and Sonic Adventure 2 Battle where it was a port of the Dreamcast titles but with some additions or graphical face lifts, BfBB was gonna be something entirely different.

It was gonna be a remake. Now you'd think oh, this could be great. There was aspects that didn't make it to the final version of the original, maybe they can bring it to life. Well, just to get this out of the way it wasn't gonna happen. It was an entirely new developer working off of what was already completed. The game would be developed by THQ Nordic's Purple Lamp division, one of their earliest projects. Since then it appears that Purple Lamp has built up a solid resume, having also developed a remake of Epic Mickey which appears to have gained better reception than the original Wii game. Their work on this remake would lead them to work on the latest SpongeBob game The Cosmic Shake, which received mixed reviews, but who knows maybe it's good.

Now, why did I take so long to get to this game? I didn't own anything that could play it. I bought this on Steam then realized that my OS couldn't run it. I just got a Switch and this was among the short list I had in mind for games. I had been curious about this remake for a while, and if I were to ever get my hands on it I'd see if my impressions would be just.

Initial Impressions

When I first learned of the remake, I was just amazed that an old licensed game was getting this kind of treatment. Now look, I'm all for giving attention to games that deserve it. But in this situation, lest it's just an emulation of an old game, why not save the remakes for games that really deserve it? I.e., games that came out bad for whatever reason and would be given a chance to be good, show players how it was supposed to be. Revenge of the Flying Dutchman is the kind of game that really deserves a remake, especially given what the developers had gone through. Not even just SpongeBob, games like Crash Twinsanity or Sonic 06, where a good game is somewhere beneath the bugs. Lest fans wanna pull the weight like with Sonic P-06. Want something done you gotta do it yourself sometimes.

Right off the bat it looked as though Rehydrated - end of the full title and will be said as such for simplicity - was gonna primarily feature cosmetic changes, the big one being the character animations, but when we get there. For a time it looked as though Rehydrated was overshadowing the original game, and with such relevance and that version being at the forefront, it had better live up to the hype.

Whenever I got to play the game, I'd have as much of the original game in mind to see what has changed between either version

Playing the Game

Right off the bat, Rehydrated featured a number of cosmetic changes. They definitely adapted the original game faithfully, though there were certain changes. For example, the character animations. The original game featured more limited animation, especially showing when it came to talking to other characters. SpongeBob had two animations throughout them. In this game, they've added more animations in tune to what they say, for the most part. While it shows for most characters, others just cycle through their animations, Squidward being an example where he is perpetually unhappy, even in scenes where he'd be happy or laughing sarcastically.

Now I see the application, and whether or not it was necessary here, the writing in this game is great along with the line delivery. Either was strong enough to neglect the limited animation, this was early-2000s SpongeBob after all. Not to mention the limited animation lends better to some of the jokes in this, the quick cut to Patrick in the last convo you have with Squidward at Sand Mountain comes out of nowhere... I dunno, it feels like something was missing in Rehydrated's take. But on the inverse things felt more natural in the G-Love cutscene in Downtown Bikini Bottom, a build up to Gary destroying one of the robots.

But that aside, the model work in this is great, and if Purple Lamp were gonna be making more SpongeBob games after this it was fair to try and get a grasp on the models as soon as possible. I don't really have any standouts to name, but I haven't seen any particularly bad ones so, take that as you will. They did get a little cheeky with some idle and pedestrian animations. I've seen SpongeBob and Patrick pull the shocked face gag, I've seen one fish dab, remember when that was all over the internet? They also threw in some additional images, I've seen handsome Squidward for one. To be fair, the original also had a picture of Squidward's unsure face, but Purple Lamp's additions stick out like a sore thumb. Go to Squidward's Dream and look at the paintings in the background and you'll see what I mean.

Along with the characters they also redesigned the robots. In the original game the robots looked more, you know... robotic. You could make the argument that the robots for the most part looked out of place against the locales in SpongeBob, but that's kind of the point, SpongeBob taking out anomalies. The new designs blend in better with the game's universe, granted, and given how... cartoony for a lack of a better word SpongeBob became I guess it makes sense. The new designs aren't bad by any stretch, some are pretty negligible, only issues I could think of are minor nitpicks. For instance, Dick- I mean Slick's protective bubble is just that, a bubble, not an oil bubble. He still has the oil attack so that's why I bring it up.

The game plays the same as the original did, for the most part. Compared to the original the controls here feel a bit... best word I could use is literal. I feel like for the most part I had to space out my double jumps in areas I'd normally make with a rapid tap. It's especially noticeable on the sliding sections where you have to jump up to a high platform. Normally you're flung off and you can use the momentum and one jump to carry you to it, but what could be made in one or two tries had to be done multiple times because I either under or overshoot it, or suddenly my character halts because I didn't move the analog stick forward. Or I just haven't played either version in a long time.

Maybe it's down to the game's engine. The original game was built on the RenderWare engine, while this game was made with the Unreal Engine. Certain things would be tweaked based on what was at the disposal of said engine, and as a result the initial feeling of the game may change.

As mentioned before since this is more or less a ground up remake of the original Battle for Bikini Bottom you can put any hopes of new content to rest, at least in the main story mode. But that's not to say no changes were made. On the positive side, when it comes to enemies that shoot projectiles you can now see where said projectiles would land. This worked greatly in the Robo-Patrick boss fight where I was able to stay in one section of the arena and not get hit. In the very last level you are able to restart at the last fuse you break, compared to the original where you have to start from the very beginning.

Also in Rehydrated you have the ability to jump while in the Sponge Ball form. I can see scenarios where this would be useful, especially for jumps you can't make as easily as others.

As for some criticism...

In Mr. Krabs' dream, for some strange reason they put protective bubbles around the Duplicatotron 3000s. The level is merciless enough and given the oil projectiles flung at you you'd be lucky to even land a hit on the machine as is. This is the only level where it happened too, and it makes me wonder if either developer knew that this level would be a hell of an experience and nixed the content in Patrick's dream as a breather of sorts.

I noticed that the bubble barrier around Slick has a wider hit radius, meaning you cannot hit it up close without taking damage, least it happened to me. The Duplicatotron is also a bit more rapid-fire compared to how it was in the original, in that it takes less time for new robots to be spawned. This isn't always a problem, but especially in the last stage you'd feel like you have to rush to destroy the Duplicatotron before it spawns a robot that can either hurt you or knock you down.

The swing hooks are also a bit finnicky. In the original game all you had to do was latch onto it and let go by pressing the jump button. In this game you have to hold onto the B button and let go at the right time. It's more awkward compared to the original, and if you're used to said original's controls, and if you're soaring on the rooftops as this happens it's gonna be a very annoying experience. I had gotten used to this for better or worse, but mechanics you think you know from an older version not being replicated in the remake it has to be addressed.

The wall jumping is also fairly different, more rapid compared to the original version. I was able to clear walls sooner than I did before, but it also feels off. It was especially noticeable in the Graveyard of Ships, where your wall jumping skills are put to the test. As a kid I had to redo the jumps multiple times, but going through it in Rehydrated... I actually managed to get it on the first try. I think in the first you had to move forward as you hit the walls, but in this you're moved forward automatically you just have to jump to each wall to stay up.

Now, you remember the Ball Room? Sure you do. It was one of the harder levels in the game... and Rehydrated somehow made it more annoying. Piece by piece as the level was intended. The one piece of track you have to bubble bowl into place, while you can do it right away and it'll either stay as is or for long, in this game it'll go back to its old position in a few seconds, I had to learn that the hard way. Remember that GameSpot review of Rehydrated where the scrub couldn't push the button to lower the scoop? Either I pressed the button too soon, or you had to be super precise with your position to get it to work, especially if you let the ball get close and have no idea how long it'll stay down. The pressure pad track piece, bringing back the literal analogy, while you can get off the pad a little before the ball makes it to the other side of the gap, you have to let the ball make it all the way to the other side or it will fall. Finally the fan covering the launch button moves a lot faster. Despite all that, I was able to get past the pendulum mallet, the shifting board and the fan button the first time the ball got to either.

The slide levels, especially with the time trials on top of them are stressful, has been between either version. And by slide levels, I mean the kelp vines. Any criticism I have of the Kelp Vines can apply to the original and Rehydrated, very little space to move around, and with so many curves it's very easy to fall off. The turns combined with the momentum was so bad I wound up bailing on a leaf trampoline because I kept going off the edge. Ironically, had I just kept on the path, and hopped onto the next one above I could've got one of Patrick's socks and be done with the level in one fell swoop... provided I didn't fall and have to start from the beginning.

As a kid I struggled to hit the stone tiki switch that would raise the leaf trampoline and allow me to hit the button to open the gate to the Kelp Vines, until I learned that you didn't need to use the throw fruit to use the Patrick Teeter-Totter. And that's another criticism for both games, they mention you need the throw fruit to use the Teeter-Totter, but they don't outright tell you that anything you can throw would work... that is until you figure it out by accident or you get so frustrated you use a stone tiki as your plan B.

The cruise bubble is easily the most annoying weapon you can use in this game. In the original you were essentially moving a crosshair to your destination. But in this game the missile is shown, and somehow the controls feel heavier here. If you keep moving it in one direction it'll be hard to go back the other. The bubble bowl is also fairly unpredictable, getting caught in level geometry and sometimes just stopping at random, but this isn't frequent.

Then there's grinding. In the original game there was a cheat you can do to raise your shiny object count, if you wanted to meet Mr. Krabs' prices. In Rehydrated the cheat isn't there. And shiny object counts are hard to maintain, especially since you have to pay the tolls just to progress. I had died early on in Jellyfish Fields, and knowing of the grinding situation I would typically use that opportunity to fight and break respawned robots and tikis to make sure I had enough to get Golden Spatulas from Mr. Krabs every time I finished off an area.

But that's not enough to keep you ahead of the curve. Easily the most expensive area in this game is the movie theater, at a whopping 40,000 shiny objects. I knew it was gonna be a problem I had to deal with, especially since I was down to three last new areas, sure it wasn't required to beat the game 100%, but I leave no stone unturned in my games. To put it into perspective my journey to 40k shiny objects, every time I returned to Bikini Bottom I would destroy all of the tikis out in the open. Once I got every last golden spatula aside from the Chum Bucket Lab's, I had a little over 20k shiny objects, so I thought, why don't I resume destroying bikini Bottom's tikis? Knowing they reset, I would enter the buildings around and destroy the tikis across all three areas, rinsing and repeating across eight buildings... and it wasn't enough.

So then, I taxied to the start of the Sea Caves, destroyed the floating tikis and the Chomp Bot at the other side of the gap, went back to the sand castle and destroyed the tikis, Ham-Mer, Duplicatotron and Monsoons until I made it to 40k shiny objects. All of that... for a somewhat underwhelming concept art slideshow. Nothing against Rehydrated, I'd have the same complaints toward the original, as well as Pac-Man World 2 and Scooby Doo Night of 100 Frights. All that searching... for pictures.

And the Glitches...

I'm not gonna beat around the bush, depending on the version you got, Rehydrated had several glitches at launch, and even after some patches some had persisted to this day. Not like the original was totally polished, between certain things not being rendered fully, among other things you can get with enough prodding, but some were definitely noticeable in Rehydrated. I never got to experience the more notable ones first hand, but I did encounter some. One glitch I found happened when I used the cruse bubble, where I was unable to move beyond sneaking. Somehow I managed to undo it before I had to soft reset. Then there's a game breaking glitch that persists to this day.

In Sand Mountain, you know that one sock that you can only get if you destroy all eight sandmen on Flounder Hill? Compared to the original where you can only see the number of sandmen destroyed every time you hit one, Rehydrated gives you a counter. But in spite of that little effort, get this. If you fall or die going down the slope and you haven't destroyed all the sandmen, they will not reset, meaning you will not be able to get the sock for it, meaning you won't be able to beat the game one hundred percent, at least as the game intended you to play it. I heard that a similar soft lock occurs in the Krusty Krab if you leave the area before grabbing the sock in there, but back to Sand Mountain, I was lucky to have heard about the glitch before I started the game for the first time and against all odds... I managed to destroy all the sandmen without falling or dying and get the sock, so I was able to beat the game as intended. Here's my evidence.

But if you weren't so lucky, if you could somehow trigger a glitch that would allow you to clip into the movie theater you'll find a sock inside.

Another thing I noticed was when I directly warped to the second part of the game's final boss fight. When I got there all the fuses were broken and the trampolines were up. I would assume that there was no other way out, and that the only way to get back to this level properly was to play the Chum Bucket Lab from the beginning. Using the logic put toward a glitch where if you pay the clam to activate the bungee in the Trench of Advanced Darkness, only to fall off while doing the bubble bowl the sock will not spawn, the cutscenes act as an interim for the phases of the Lab levels, and because they didn't play when I got to the second part, there you go.

As another odd thing, you know that after beating the game, during the credits you are put into the Sponge Ball Arena. Well, after beating it you get to access it through a stand in the middle of the road in the second part of the Bikini Bottom hub world. Well in this game it doesn't happen. The only way you can access the arena again is if you play the Chum Bucket Lab again. Needless to say I was not gonna leave the arena until I got every last shiny object there. Just because it's an extra that doesn't mean people don't want to play in it.

Final Thoughts

Rehydrated is far from a perfect remake, even as a game in a vacuum. But I have a thing for flawed games, makes me appreciate them even more. I didn't go into Rehydrated with high standards, if anything it was a good excuse for me to have a childhood game on a modern system. There was some whiplash based on what I knew from the original compared to how Rehydrated handled it, but in spite of that I was able to make it through. Any flaws I brought up are either minor or are things you can at least adjust to overtime.

It's definitely not as great as the original game, and it's not the nostalgia talking. The original felt more fluid, I liked the more restrained art and animation style which allowed the writing to really pop, and overall it had enough to stand alongside the likes of Super Mario Sunshine and Sonic Adventure DX/2 Battle. Maybe I'm more used to the original, maybe Rehydrated has a few too many hiccups to rise above the original, but that doesn't have to mean the game is bad. If you know what you're doing you can beat the game in about a few hours, so it's not even that big of a commitment to make if you wanna play through.

As with anything following an existing version, if you come into Battle for Bikini Bottom for the first time, I strongly suggest you play the original first so you know what it was supposed to be like, then play Rehydrated so you can see how it stacks up. If you play the remake first it may lead to certain unfair impressions of the original. Such is the way with remakes and what they're remakes of.

If you want a rating, I'd give it a 7.5 out of 10.

[blazehedgehog]

Recently I’ve been playing, and loving, Penny’s Big Breakaway and it’s made me realize how stiff official Sonic games have felt since Sonic Heroes. It feels fantastic to chain moves together as Penny. While I don’t want a Sonic game to play exactly like Penny’s Big Breakaway I do want to enter a similar flow state while playing. Sonic Team seems allergic to making any gameplay/movement options that allows for flow… do you have any idea why?

That's the 65-million-dollar question, isn't it.

Several times over the years I've pushed back on the idea when people say Sonic "can't work in 3D." Of course Sonic could work in 3D, it just takes the right team to build it. The concepts and principals of a Sonic game are not exclusive to 2D. You can build a game on those ideals in 3D and it will work just fine.

If you go back and watch my "How Do We Fix Sonic?" video, I also put forth the idea that a lot of 3D Sonic games are the way they are because Sonic Team does not trust the player. To some degree, rightfully so: there's a growing pile of one-level fangame demos where some college kid tries to do 3D Sonic "right" and while a lot of them are okay, I think it makes for an easy case to see why official Sonic games have so much scripting in them.

When you're going that fast, and you're that acrobatic, it becomes very easy to make some incredibly dumb mistakes. It's not that nobody can play that game, it's that a game like that might struggle to achieve mass market appeal. Sonic is, first and foremost, a pick-up-and-play game. I've been thinking of that term a lot lately since the release of Ring Racers, and it basically means a game you don't have to learn. A game where you turn it on and know everything about it instinctively.

The entire pitch for Sonic was a game you could play with just one button. Easy to start playing, difficult to master over the long term. It's a tough balancing act. Especially when you're aiming for a game that a 10 year old can play.

When I was 10 years old, I couldn't even stay on the road in Super Mario Kart. That's what we're working with here.

So they make Sonic into this guided experience with heavy scripting where they can insulate the player from making dangerous mistakes. Lots of spectacle and minimal friction.

Now you add in the pressure of deadlines and budgets. A fangame like Sonic GT can spend five years as an alpha still figuring out its level design, tweaking its mechanics, before finally releasing a four or five level "game." Whereas an official Sonic game probably has to make a pitch, get to alpha, nail all of its controls and mechanics down relatively early. Probably within the first year of development at least, if not within a period of months.

Then they have to build a game for those mechanics. And, with being so scripted and directed, they can't deviate much. Once they're locked in, they don't have a lot of wiggle room to redefine what the game plays like.

That even goes for researching better ways to do things. I don't think these guys were given much of a chance to stop and think. Sonic Adventure 1 came out in October 1998 in Japan, that team moved to America to work on the September 1999 United States release, Sonic Adventure 2 was announced probably not even six months later, it came out within 18 months of its announcement just in time for that team to crank on the super rushed Gamecube port, which segued into an equally rushed port of the original Sonic Adventure, then their first multiplatform release on a third-party engine just a year or two later, followed by a sequel less than two years later, and another sequel less than two years after that...

Running and running and running and never stopping... and, well, I guess this is just what Sonic in 3D plays like now, right? That's the precedent. Sales are relying on not alienating people who are used to the way these games play.

Plus, it also depends on who within Sega is involved. I tend to agree that we shouldn't pin decisions all on one guy anymore for how many developers are actually involved in a game (200+ for Sonic Frontiers), but it's hard to deny that in the Morio Kishimoto era of 3D Sonic games, they've made a dedicated to effort to lock Sonic down and script his movements more than ever. Starting in Sonic Colors all the way up to the most recent Sega of Japan games, player movement is more restricted and automatically controlled than any other Sonic games to come before it.

Even Sonic Frontiers, for all of its open zone gameplay, once you touch a rail or one of those floating platforms, it tries to restrict and control you as much as humanly possible. Helicopter parent game design. "Do it my way exactly, or stop playing the game."

And I think all of this just collides with itself and makes a big ugly mess. I think it's telling Sonic Unleashed is such a cult favorite given its the closest thing we've had to a decent reboot of mechanics, even though it's still trapped in a lot of that scripted spectacle design.