Sonic Re-Design

[Pinkie-Dawn]

It's no secret that Sonic has once again fallen into the pit of mediocrity. Fans are starting to worry about the series' eventual death if this keeps up, but a user by the name of Good Blood has proposed an idea to bring Sonic back to his former glory: redesign him yet again and add new abilities in its 2D gameplay mechanics. Here is his video where he goes into more detail about it:





What are your thoughts on this new redesign? Too indie? Too different? Just right?

 

[Laguna]

Gotta love how this guy is asking for a redesign when that's exactly why Sonic games haven't been good lately. Last time I checked, SEGA had pretty much gotten the boost formula right by Generations and they just threw the idea away instead of expanding on it. (this was before i even watched the video)

Now, this guy brings up the point to make Sonic look vastly different because that's how you'd appeal to the older fans, but I think it would do the exact opposite and turn them away from the franchise. The fans would feel that this Sonic isn't the Sonic they grew up with, and the fact that so many people turned their back on Sonic Boom after seeing the characters proves that. By redesigning Sonic again you're just alienating the fans, which this redesign is supposed to be targeted to, and you're proving that you're completely inconsistent with your games.

Another point is that this guy states that the Sonic franchise needs "fixing" when it really didn't. Sonic Generations had the perfect mix of speed and platforming for both the 2D and 3D playstyles. One of the most satisfying things about the Sonic games is going really fast through the levels, and it was the thing that made the franchise stand out among all the other platformers at the time. The playstyle proposed here doesn't feel that way, it just makes Sonic into yet another indie-style platformer without anything to separate it from other indie-style platformers. Again, they hit the jackpot with Generations in terms of gameplay, but they didn't capitalize on it and just trashed the idea.

Also, this guy says that it will still be focused on speed... And then brings up an idea that completely breaks said speed: the backpack. Sonic never really had many puzzles in the first place, and this is another thing that just makes this idea into yet another 2D platformer. Sure, Sonic Boom had the whole button pushing thing but you're forgetting that Sonic Boom is supposed to be a spinoff and not a main series Sonic game. It's even developed by a completely different team of people, so you can't even blame SEGA for it.

This guy also goes entirely off ratings and sales to see what games are good or not. That is a terrible way to judge the quality of a game, I mean Sonic '06 is one of the Platinum Hits on the 360 so it's completely misleading. The guy's trying to sound smart by spending 5 minutes on Wikipedia looking up the ratings for the Sonic games and judging how good they are just by that. That is not the way to do it. He's also judging how successful the series is right now with Sonic Boom, a game that I already mentioned is a spinoff and not part of the main series.

Okay, I can't believe I actually sat through all of that and ranted about it this much, that is 30 minutes of my life I want back. Bottom line, don't experiment with the Sonic franchise even more, just stick with what works.

 

[mew_nani]

The whole reason Sonic as a whole has gone downhill is BECAUSE they redesigned him and changed the premise of the games in the first place. In the Genesis era Sonic the Hedgehog was essentially perfect as it was; you raced to the end of the level at breakneck speed, smashing robots and trying to beat the tar out of Robotnik because he was doing evil stuff. Later Tails and Knuckles showed up, and Amy was a girl you had to rescue, but there wasn't a bajillion characters or an overarching story. You were just a cool hedgehog doing cool things. Then they redesigned Sonic, added a billion characters, and the focus shifted more to a story than the gameplay itself. Maybe Adventure wasn't so bad (I dunno as I haven't played it) but after it left the Dreamcast the games took a bad turn downhill, and it all came to a head with Sonic '06, which was not only the worst game in the Sonic franchise but one of the worst games in history. Everything in that game was a bad idea, and it's a testament to the Sonic fanbase that the franchise didn't just die right there.

Sonic got better because they returned back to the way the games originally worked, and up until Sonic Boom they actually fixed him somewhat. I dunno how Lost World was but I did hear Colors and Generations were very amazing games, and that's all because they revisited how Sonic games used to be and just ran with it. They put him back together, so to speak.

They should have just stuck with what made Generations and Colors so good, and by extension what made the Genesis games so good. Another redesign isn't gonna save Sonic any more than Sonic '06 did.

 

[Yukari]

striderviper already pointed out that the sales figures aren't an accurate way of judging a game's quality so I'm going going to rant about that.

But I don't think what Sonic needs is a redesign because that's what they've already been doing and that clearly hasn't worked out for them so far. Go back to what Sonic Colors/Generations was doing people. those games were actually good.

 

[Sydian]

While it's normal for franchises (or really anything) to grow, expand, and change things up a bit, I think Sonic just isn't one of those things that needs to do that. We've seen it time and time again change into something different, whether by design, story, gameplay, or all of those, and it rarely ever works (I'm only saying rarely because if I said it never did, someone would probably choke me). In the case of the Sonic franchise, I really think it just needs to go back to its roots. That's where it was doing the best. And if not back to the roots, at least back to the standards set in Generations.

 

[Entermaid]

I don't get how the "new" Sonic's appearance is more mature. If anything older gamers will be disappointed and not connect with what they would perceive as a cheap knock off. Also, is Mario "maturing"? And that's the difference? The argument is pretty weak.

Mario is still slapstick, colorful, vibrant, toonish, but appeals to all because of the game mechanics. The Mario target group, like pokemon, is young kids and young adults (there is a gap in-between which tend to favor first shooters.) Marketing ONLY to adults would have severely weakened both the Mario and Pokemon series, rather they have great games, and don't mess with the aspects of the game mechanics we like. Sonic's game mechanics are the problem...not the design of the character or the marketing target.

 

[Necrum]

I don't like Sonic's all blue face, and many of the gameplay elements he described really don't seem all that suited to the Sonic we love, but more akin to the one we already don't. This certainly seems like it would function as a good game design, but maybe just for a different, maybe new IP instead of an existing one that everyone just wants to go back to basics.

 

[Palkia]

Sonic is just a cash cow for sega. I doubt anyone in sega even cares about the quality of the games with the Sonic licence. Look at Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric for example. While there have been a few decent games in the past years (generations & heroes were pretty good), I feel that the Sonic brand is on a path of no return. Giving him another redesign will make things even worse, didn't Sonic Boom prove redesigning won't help the quality of the game?

 

[Yukari]

We've seen it time and time again change into something different, whether by design, story, gameplay, or all of those, and it rarely ever works (I'm only saying rarely because if I said it never did, someone would probably choke me).

Considering that you aren't going to say it out of fear of being choked I will. :P

I have yet to see a sonic game that changed into something different where it actually worked. Not even the well loved Sonic Adventure games.

 

[Spinosaurus]

Sonic Colors/Generation are different. They're not anything like the classic Sonic games at all.

There's also Sonic Rush/Rush Adventure.

Sonic is just a cash cow for sega. I doubt anyone in sega even cares about the quality of the games with the Sonic licence. Look at Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric for example. While there have been a few decent games in the past years (generations & heroes were pretty good), I feel that the Sonic brand is on a path of no return. Giving him another redesign will make things even worse, didn't Sonic Boom prove redesigning won't help the quality of the game?

Sonic Boom isn't a good example. It's a cashed in outsourced game yes, but it's because of the cartoon, which is actually a quality show. The cartoon came before the games.
The cartoon is really its own thing at this point.
When was the last Sonic Team developed game? Lost World wasn't even developed by the Sonic Generations team, and that game mostly suffered from being experimental than anything.

Also Heroes is baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaad.

 

[Pinkie-Dawn]

The guys at Screwattack believe the Sonic fanbase's plethora of ideas of what they perceived as "the perfect Sonic game" is the sole reason why Sonic games haven't been good, not the redesigns like Good Blood is telling us (just a bit of warning that the end of the video will have nothing to do with why Sonic games are bad).

 

[mew_nani]

The guys at Screwattack believe the Sonic fanbase's plethora of ideas of what they perceived as "the perfect Sonic game" is the sole reason why Sonic games haven't been good, not the redesigns like Good Blood is telling us (just a bit of warning that the end of the video will have nothing to do with why Sonic games are bad).

I'm not entirely sure it's such a good thing to go after the Sonic fanbase and blame them for the fall of the blue hedgehog. After all if it wasn't for them the series would have just died after Sonic '06. Those people are the hardcore of the hardcore, a cultlike entity that will happily absorb anything and everything Sonic no matter how bad it might be or how much it was rushed, and for better or worse they embraced Sonic and allowed it to survive to this day. Not all of them are like that of course, but still, it's worth noting.

It's more Sega's fault than the fanbase, but both are to blame in different ways. Sega has a habit of rushing things, and this screwed up Sonic more than anything else. Wanna know why Sonic '06 was so epically bad? It was rushed. Why was Sonic the Hedgehog Genesis such a failure? Rushed. Sonic 2 was rushed, yes, but it was still well built and a wonderful game, and it didn't rely on any stories or myth arcs or anything like that. Just good gameplay, which allowed it to get away with several planned levels being cut so it could be released in time for Christmas.

But of course being rushed isn't the only reason why Sonic began to fail. After it left the Genesis Sega began to lean towards more storytelling in Sonic games, and this doesn't always work well for two reasons; the first being that the cast is made up of silly looking furry animals and one tall egg-shaped mad scientist, and the second being that the stories are rarely if ever thought out well. It takes time to make a good story, because it takes quite a while to work out all the kinks and plot holes and make it nice and sensical, and this is rarely if ever done for Sonic. Which is fine; the Genesis games didn't have a storyline beyond "Dr. Robotnik is doing evil crap and Sonic has to go stop him along with Tails/Knuckles" but it really didn't need a good deep storyline to be good. But they attempted to go deeper and ended up with progressively more and more poorly thought out stories that never got the opportunity to be refined, and this dragged Sonic down like a cement weight drags down a victim of the mob in a raging river. Sonic wasn't ever really meant to engage in Final Fantasy or Zelda-esque storylines, but they tried it anyway, and it just never really worked out, both because the stories weren't thought out well and because they didn't really fit the characters involved. But it's not like Sega took notice of this; they kept trying it and trying it and it's only recently they decided to scrap it and just go back to what Sonic was originally about; going blindingly fast through levels and smashing up robots.

But it's partially the fans' fault too, because they bought this poorly thought out and badly beta-tested crap and actually liked it. I have nothing against you if you like Shadow, or if you like Sonic Adventures or anything like that. Everyone has their own personal tastes. But you can't like Sonic '06 or Sonic the Hedgehog Genesis (barring the glitches or laughing at how ridiculous it is of course) and have good taste in video games. They were rushed, horrible mockeries of video games, only printed so Sega could profit from them. But those hardcore Sonic fans not only bought them, but still defend them to this day, along with other bad Sonic games, and Sega pandered to them for quite a while before deciding to just screw it and go back to the basics.

That girl is really hilarious though.

 

[Kenchiin]

That's doesn't even look like a Sonic game. I know what he means, but I just don't like what he's offering.