Sonic is Back! Hopefully…

Well… shit.

 

I have to be careful with all this excitement. This games looks exactly what I’ve been wanting from this franchise for… how many years passed since Knuckles Chaotix? I mean… Techno Dreamworld is back!! Hell, Studiopolis alone looks mother fucking delicious!!

 

I’m not particularly thrilled about the first zone being a clone of Green Hill or that there’s only 3 characters to play, and while they’re ones I actually give a fuck about… no Espio? Rouge? Still no Mighty or Ray? Oh who am I kidding, since everyone including the guy making this game claims that extra characters are ruining the franchise.

 

Eh, I can’t complain too much. It’s more than I can say for that other game. I thought the whole “Retro Sonic meets Retard Sonic” gimmick was only for 1 game, what the fuck is this “Join the Resistence” bullshit with 2 different Sonics!? It’s like Sega wants to dig into the past and ruin SatAM (man this nickname is terrible).

 

I get this feeling that they’re trying to go the whole “alternate universe” gig that… surprisingly worked well for comic books. Sega’s never been subtle when it came to a direction that they’re going with in any franchise while half-assing the actual direction. And if that is the direction they’re going, it’s already being half-assed. You don’t need 2 different Sonics in 1 game to establish this, just make 2 separate series.

Again, I can’t complain too much because we’re moving away from that unmitigated shit piece that is Sonic Boom, and all it’s moronic supporters shall be silenced. Hopefully it stays that way.

I mean… just LOOK at Studiopolis!! That LOOKS like a goddamn Sonic game!!! Nothing screams “I wanna be just like Mario when the industry crashes!!”. That’s vintage shit right there! The animations are beautiful too! Did Sega really green light this!? I thought they were so busy trying to DESTROY the franchise!! It’s unfathomable that they even gave someone the go ahead to make an actual Sonic game for once.

I’m just hoping Taxman or w/e the fuck he calls himself resists the incredible urge to flood this game with puzzles and fetch quests, especially since western developers Jack off to things that pad out the game’s length. I’m looking at you Castlevania: Lords of Shallow. Tomb Raider 2013… practically any computer-centric game that came out after 2003.

I’m fucking serious, if I catch myself having to light some torches in some “intricate but horribly HORRIBLY impractical” method of opening a doorway, I will raze this Earth!

Who would go to a Sonic event these days?

House of Blues? Seems appropiate considering the state of this franchise.

I didn’t notice this before, but Sonic seems to have more conventions than any other franchise out there. I don’t think even Star Wars gets this much love. It feels as though they’re trying to compensate for the franchise’s downfall.

I wish Sega spent this amount of time and thought into making better Sonic games, but eh, a party is cheaper. So now they’re “teasing” a new Sonic game announcement. Oh joy, after turning Sonic Dash (the only REAL success they have at this point) into a Boom knock off, having a Boom sequel (as insulting as that is), another damn olympics sequel, and a movie deal with Sony (you know, the guys who FUCKED UP the Amazing Spiderman reboot, and aren’t known for making quality products), I’m just SO certain that w/e the hell they’re teasing is enough to reinvigorate my faith in the franchise! The future of Sonic just couldn’t look any brighter!

I have to puke at Aaron Weber’s comment. If you’re not saying there’s a game announcement at this party, then you should probably shut the fuck up. You know what really pisses me off? This “party” takes place at Comic-Con, an event usually attended by adults. Sega has been aggressively targeting CHILDREN with this series. So if they were serious with the direction they werre taking this franchise, they might as well find a Chuck E Cheese somewhere, cause whatever they plan to show is not going to excite adults in any way. This is probably why Weber’s comment irritates me so much. He throws these “teases” around as though he’s talking to children.

If Sega was actually serious about improving Sonic, they shouldn’t be waiting until a party to announce anything. This shit only works when a franchise is in a good state. It feels childish and obnoxious that, considering modern day Sonic is shit, they would use a party or an event to showcase a new game, which for all intents and purposes WILL suck! If the future of Sonic is just more “Boom”, then we can all just say “Good night, sweet prince” and continue bitching about Nintendo’s idiocy. Or Sony’s refusal to drop the prices of their fucking PS3 controllers. But don’t embarrass the fandom with a party when the games are a steaming pile of cow dung! Fix the franchise FIRST! Then you can have ALL the parties you want!

The food better not be shit either, resturaunt owning mother fuckers…

Put a Spinball on this!

……..Man, that’s a lame title. Merry Christmas bitches!

When it comes to Sonic the Hedgehog, the one thing that everyone has to keep in mind as to what it’s all about. No, it’s not about the speed. It’s not about the platforming. It’s not even about Chaos Emeralds. It’s all…. about this.

Pinball. Pinball is, in actuality, the life blood of Sonic the Hedgehog. The secret ingredient that kept people wondering why it tasted so great. Pinball was what gave way to the many gimmicks and features you see in Sonic games of old and today. Every spring you bounce on is plunger rod meant to send a ball into play. Every hole you enter that propelled you through to another part of the level was simply a tube with 2 spinning wheels that propels a ball from hole to hole. The twisty bridges of Emerald Hill were merely the wire ramps a ball traverses through on a board. Sonic’s world, the very planet of Mobius, is but a giant organic pinball machine. And Sonic is a living, breathing organic pinball.

Playing with himself.

The reason why 2D Sonic games of today feel sluggish and “off” is because the people making the games do not understand pinball. The physics of 2D Sonic is based on pinball. Without studying pinball, the significance of Sonic is lost in translation. Without studying pinball, you get low acceleration in Sonic 4. Playing Knuckles Chaotix, it was evident that Sega started to lose sight of what the first 4 games play so well, so by the time we get to Sonic Adventure 2, it abandoned the Pinball aspects completely in favor of automation. Hell, Casino Park and Bingo Highway make me cry, they play like ass.

The nature of Sonic games being pinball is significant when you consider how difficult it must’ve been to translate Sonic’s world into television form. Since no one really got Sonic back then, tv producers had to make due with loony toons crap to “justify” the pinball world… or ignore it and make something fucking awesome like SATAM.

Casino Night Zone was Sonic in it’s most purest form. The flippers, the bumpers, the flashing lights, the jackpots, everything. Twas a very popular level that created nostalgic memories for years, so much so that Sega included it as one of Sonic’s many level tropes.

Then, some guys at a company called STI said “fuck it, lets just make… a pinball game!” “Fuck yeer, it’s gonna be sweet! We gonna put like a big scary ass dragon in a lake, then you can kill that stupid bird cluck, and then you can smash into like 3 different dragons, and then we gonna have like 16 chaos emeralds, it’s just dope!”.

AMERICANO FUUUNKY AKSHAN!

Today, we call this game one of the many unfortunate examples of experimentation with the Sonic series, along with 3D Blast and countless spinoffs of the modern era. It’s unfortunate because it shows that we as a whole… don’t understand pinball.

The nature of pinball is basically a gambling machine with less risks involved. When people describe Sonic Spinball being a “hard” game, what they really mean is “God, this is so stupid!”.

 

If you were like me, you rented this baby from blockbuster, and those assholes could never keep a manual in tow. If you were that unfortunate, chances are you’d never know how to get passed level 1. If you did, you’d give up, feeling the tedium of the game.

The basic idea of making a pinball spinoff would be to do something like Sonic Pinball Party. But because STI wasn’t gay, we got a much bigger beast. We had one of the darker themed Sonic games of the classic era for no other reason than atmosphere, we had 4 maze like pinball boards to navigate, and we had an actual objective which (unfortunately for me) involved a glorified fetch quest. Combined with that was a physics engine that made us all vomit. Which is kinda odd as despite all that, it mimics an actual pinball machine rather well despite how poorly it runs.

Because the game was a giant pinball machine, the goal of completion was obnoxious. As I sad before, the game is a fetch quest in which you have to find 3-5 different chaos spread out thinly through each level. And was one of the most tedious objectives to complete. One, you had to know where fuckers were, and that involved exploration. Exploration which is dependent on the direction the ball is hit… which could take forever if you don’t time your flippers right. Oh, and once you know where they are, you have to contend with several obstacles blocking your path. Before you can get one emerald that is submerged in acid, you have to pull 2 switches located beneath the emerald. Then, you have to travel into an upper level and find your way to that emerald via 2 chutes that are blocked off by 3 barrels that you have to re-enter 4 times just to clear out the blockage. Then, you might have to drive a minecart left or right and hope to hell you find an emerald along the way. Rinse and repeat. And then fight a boss at the end.

All the while avoiding THIS asshole!

This one level can take as long as 10 minutes. And that’s the entire game. The way the goal is handled kills the entire game. For a title with only 4 levels, you’d think it would be less evil about how you could progress. I have yet to get passed level 2.

Spinball is a very stupid game because it has a very stupid objective. Whoever thought making a pinball game centered around a fetch quest deserved to be fired. It’s unfortunate because it had a lot of cool concepts. Every level is based on an elaborate defense system which serve as important landmarks in dismantling Robotnik’s base. They weren’t just some random levels the creators thought of. The game’s enemies had a more sinister feel to them, especially Rexxon.

And this creepy ass boss epitomizes the horrors of the veg-o-fortress.

The game had a much more terrifying feel to it than every other Sonic title at the time, and certainly felt like every other Genesis game too. Grainy rock music and all. And hey, it didn’t hurt to include some SATAM cameos. Though it’s a tad unoriginal to have the bonus rounds be normal pinball games, they’re certainly a helluva lot more fun.

Spinball, for all it’s faults, was a pretty ambitious game, when you get right down to it. Having this story of completely destroying a volcano fortress, pinball levels with different rooms, fucking dragons. You honestly get a sense that STI wanted to go big with this title. Hell, Sega in general seemed really primed for this game to win awards. The advertising campaign for Spinball was unbelievable. Course, it was also included with 2 other games (CD and Chaos) as some “Trinity of consumerism” called Sonic Mania . 3 major releases all on the same day. And with Genesis being the most popular and accessible of the 3 current devices, Spinball was obviously the attention grabber. And this was just a spinoff.

If anything, we could say that Spinball was the lesser of several evils. The only spinoff that didn’t erode any of Sonic’s popularity and in actuality made it… even cooler. Had the game not been stupid with it’s goal, the game might’ve been much more enjoyable to play and not feel like some pain in the ass grind.

Now, how I would’ve done it would be to have the goal of each level be score based. You have a set score to achieve, and you have at least 5-7 minutes to reach this score or you lose. IE everytime you hit a bumper, or killed an enemy, you gain points. Going into different areas of the level would apply some score multiplier, and finding any of the chaos emeralds along the way would dramatically increase your score. That way, it feels like your basic pinball game, but with the time limit, there’s an added amount of tension to keep things interesting, and there would be actual incentive to finding the emeralds. Because no one likes to search for things unless there is a benefit that MATTERS to the player. The whole point of scavenging for items in games was to gain benefits during the course of the level, so when you have Chaos Emeralds that boost your score in under a short time frame, you better believe yo happy ass would be looking for them. So while the same basic idea is there, it’s not the main goal of the game. Someone should DEFINITELY hack the fuck out of Spinball’s rom and put that idea in.

Fuuuuuuuuuuuuck I sounded like a nerd. 😦

Perhaps it’s all just vanity

Well… it’s been a couple of months since S.Doom’s release, the drama is gone and *sigh*, I missed quite a show according to the peeps I’ve spoken with. To see all the meltdowns and alleged “mass conversions” that took place would’ve been a show more spectacular than the news of Nintendo wanting to kill off the Pii U.

It begs the question, when news of this game aaaaaaaaaand Lost Mind dropped, what in the fresh hell possessed people to support these games in the first place? There mere fact that they were exclusive to fledging Nintendo consoles alone was enough to smell a bust a mile away, yet people stubbornly clinged to a false pretense that there was bound to be success amid the rampant skepticism.

From the last few discussions I’ve had, it probably had jack shit to do with optimism of the games, but because they love the smell of their own asses.

I was talking with a lady (I believe she had guest appearances on Sonic Dissected and cursed someone out over Super Metroid) about the fandom’s obsession with Sonic Conventions. I hadn’t really thought about just how many Sonic conventions are held on a yearly basis, and it begs the question of “why!?” When the object of your fandom has a quality threshold that’s 3 degress below whaleshit, there’s nothing to be proud of, never the less waste money organizing conventions no one bothers attending. But her theory goes that it had squat to do with supporting the company’s direction taken with a series and more to do with showing that they are great fans.

I think to myself “How the hell did I not see this!?”. This is fanboy behavior 101. The issue of unwarranted self-importance. When you get fans that are pre-occupied with keeping up their image of being a “true fan”, the quality of the product becomes irrelevant. Thus, you get jackoffs like this.

Terrible singer he is. Makes my ears bleed. Problem is, most of the fans are like 20 years older and act the same way. And on a more disturbing level, they care way too much about the conduct and purity of other fans. Like all that fuss about “recolors”.  “Oh, don’t make your own fan characters that in no way have any impact on my life or on the franchise we support unless they are a specifically original! NO HEDGEHOGS OR ECHIDNAS or else you’re justifying the Archie Comics existence!” But beyond that psychopathic tendency, this is why so many flamewars exist, all that nonsense about “spewing hatred, not having an open mind” and all the rampant attacks on legitimately good Sonic games like Adventure 2 or even Sonic 2, all has it’s roots in trying to prove that the fans are purely good people. By showing how “grateful” one is to the company’s new fangled  policies of destroying the series, they couldn’t care. Their self-image is more important than a creative direction taken with a franchise.

This is why they really have such ass backwards logic. Why the Emo Zeti was more acceptable than Shadow the Hedgehog. Why there weren’t “no issues” taken with the fucking horrible Boom redesigns. Why everyone was “comfortable” with Nintendo potentially buying out Sega. They don’t actually believe their own shit! They simply want to show that they are supportive fans regardless. It’s like the Joss Whedon fanboys who barley watch a damn thing he makes, but strong arms everyone to bow down to his almighty omnipotence.

The fact that most of the Sonic fanbase has merged with Nintendo fans is also very revealing. Nintendo fans are the kings of ass kissing, most of all those goddamn Pokemon fans (I’ve always compared the 2 fandoms, and it’s easy to see why) who desperately try to make Pokemon seem more adult than it is by hyping up it’s “metagame” that composes of nothing more than bitching about Smogon’s rules and tier listings oh I’m rambling again. Nintendo fans NEVER want other Nintendo fans to have any legitimate complaints about Nintendo brand, otherwise it would create the impression that “OH NO! WE AREN’T 100% WILLFULLY BLIND SHEEP! Nintendo may not support us fans ever again with puzzelda games and Shit Fox!”. You should’ve SEEN the magnificent storms over Metroid Other M!

Why specific fanboys would act like this is simple to dissect. Gamers, and hardcore gamers on a grand scale, have a deep seated insecurity about their favorite pasttime. People always want to feel as though they are a part of something, and/or have a sense of status in the world. Whether it be piddly ass school programs or even protests (admit it. Some of ya’ll just WANT some shit to go down so you can “join a movement” and tell your grandkids that “yeah… I lived that shit“). So for many people who have no actual talent or achievements, we tend to latch onto whatever it is we find significant to our lives just so we can have a sense of belonging (for many people, this includes church goers, or even sports fans). A sense that you’re a part of a community. For gamers, it’s a much stronger desire as people who play video games are ostracized as hell. And this is the thing that makes gamers terrible people to hang out with half the time, they’re always angry and overly critical of any medium they see, being overly cynical, etc., because for some strange reason, being a cynical asshole is confused with being “intellectual”. That is, ofcourse, why you see gamers trying so hard to convince people that shit like San Andreas and Dead or Alive are “art”. They want to be perceived better than they are. If you need an example, piss off any artsy dipshit gamer and watch them fire back at you with “GO BACK TO YOUR SHITTY CALL OF DUTY, YOU FUCKING CASUAL!”

The fanboys, on the other hand, take a completely different approach in substituting cynicism with denial, something they confuse with “optimism”. So when you see some random shitbird defending Sonic Bomb or w/e, it’s really some arrogant fuck who thinks he can mitigate legitimate criticism and tell the fans to be in happy denial. And this seems to be an epidemic when it comes to Sonic fans.

That’s what makes the denial crowd so dangerous, you see. When you have shit lord companies like Sega looking for nothing but a quick buck, they can truly exploit these assholes because they know for a fact that they’re just going to support their game regardless. And then you have ol’ crusty bastards like Mike Bollocks getting into flamewars with the fans for some reason (that’s just what I’ve been told). Sega doesn’t even have to try to make their products look appealing, if they have fans that are obsessed with their vanities and their egos, they can truly put out w/e they damn well please. Either that or Sega honestly believes that’s how fans behave (which I doubt. Sega isn’t that stupid). Denial is, unfortunately, the only way you could be a sane Sonic fan. Being a fan of a D-Rank series isn’t easy, having to stomach low quality titles on a yearly basis is a test more grating than watching Think like a Man. After this point, however, I feel this won’t be a problem much longer. Sonic Boom was so bad, it destroyed the last 4 years of pent up denial with no trouble at all.

Now it’s been replaced with “cautious optimism” and people are banking on this 2016 movie to save the series. That’s rich. We’re relying on HOLLYWOOD to save Sonic!

……Well, they can’t do any worse now……. Amma, I hate that damn face!

Sonic Championship

Flynn vs Pontac: Perfect comparison right there. Honestly, I haven’t read any of the comics since 1999, and I know they’re still hip.

Continuing my nostalgia trip, I pulled out Sonic Gems as I reminisced about being really fucking pissed off that Knuckles Chaotix wasn’t included. What a WASTED opportunity! You know how long I’ve been waiting for a modern console port of this very game!? There aren’t any 32X emulators for Wii or PS3 (to my knowledge). Goddammit! Hell, what about SegaSonic Arcade!?

So, I only had one major reason to buy this game. 3 if you included Vectorman 1 & 2. The one and only Sonic fighting game!

NO! Not that bullshit!

Pff, ain’t no fighting game at all, it’s Power Stone if you had down syndrome.

Dats da one!

It’s the only game from Gems that I hadn’t played at the time, and was probably the only other reason people bought gems (aside from getting SCD). I call it “Sonic Championship” as the localized name isn’t syntactically retarded. Another sign that SOJ cared just a wii bit too much about nippowning their IPs.

Many of Sega’s fighters at the time were all just clones of Virtua Fighter because they got the wacky idea that the game wasn’t shit. Some people compared THE FIGHTERS to another Sega game called Fighting Vipers. I recently had the chance to play that game as well seeing as everyone compared that to Bloody Roar, a series that just kicks ass, but I honestly can’t dig that game. It feels sluggish and not very fun, which was an issue for all of Sega’s fighters that took after Virtua Fighter. Sure it had more interesting characters and faster gameplay, but it feels like everyone is covered in molasses and tar. Even more so than Tekken. Seeing that THE FIGHTERS took after Vipers, I was impressed. It actually plays better in some regard. Either that or it’s just fucking hilarious.

 

Playing all of the characters, you get the slight impression that they’re all clones of each other, just with different animations for each of their attacks. Most of their unique special moves take a Ph’D in arthritis to learn. Not because they’re difficult commands, but because the controls aren’t exactly responsive. Trying to pull off even the most basic moves results in a lot of frustration. When it actually takes a few attempts to perform Knuckles’s Dragon Punch ( which is ) during a match, you know it’s fucked. The easiest “specials” for me to perform were actually the throws. Most of which involved taking the character’s weapon and using it against them. I must say, there’s a great level of satisfaction in taking Amy’s hammer and smashing the horny bastard into the pavement with it as your character shows off a sinister grin.

Oooooooooooh, lick MY ass, will yah!?

That said, it’s a really basic fighting game on it’s own, that will have you button mashing most of the time since every character has the same basic combos. Everyone even comes equipped with a spin dash attack, as well some pro wrestling moves like running up the stage walls, leaping off, and body slamming the opponents. Granted, there are 2 characters in the game that grate my nerves.

These 2 sons of bitches are the only real unique characters of the bunch. Why? They have projectile attacks. And this is a 3D fighter with no real sidestepping or decent jumping physics. You can get around Nack’s cork bullets by ducking at least and spin dashing to counter, but Bean is a real asshole. He just throws bombs around the arena to overwhelm and overpower his opponents. Imagine fighting a spammy ass Deathstroke user in Injustice, and you have Bean the Bastard. That’s how much of an asshole he is. Bark the Bear is the lesser of the “unique” characters in that he’s big, slow, and has short legs. Obviously, he does the most damage….. in a game where the attacks already hurt enough as it is. Nack, Bean, and Bark are overpowered as shit. Just sayin.

Anywho, the game has it’s own quirks that help it stand out from the other virtua fighter clones, such as that annoying ass “losing rings” sound effect every time you take damage. Honestly, every hit you take has the “cute shit” effect of you losing rings (a nice, subtle way of making it look like the characters are bleeding all over the place ala Mortal Kombat, no less. :P) and it’ll hurt your goddamn ears after a while. Trust me. The wacky and borderline cartoony animations for the amount of ass kicked gives this game a lot of energy and flare that was lacking in early 3D fighters, and the roster itself isn’t bad for a Sonic fighting game. It almost treats itself as though it were a Loony Toons game as many of the characters moves look like they were pulled out of the minds of Tex Avery and Chuck Jones. It’s this kind of humor that makes this game……. pretty fun on it’s own. When it comes to entertainment, comedy is a good insurance policy that your audience will have smiles on their faces.

…….Which is good, because it plays like ass. I mentioned before that attacks in this game hurt like hell. A single match would probably take less than a minute……often. The amount of health a player loses in the least amount of time is absolutely crazy. Even when you’re not dealing with swollen mother fuckers like Bark, regular joes like Tails could demolish opponents easily with a few well timed flurry of punches. The either the attacks in this game deal way too much damage, or the amount of health you have isn’t very high. This leads to incredibly short matches. This combined with some SNK styled AI makes the game feel like it’s based around luck.

You’ll see what I mean.

Oh, and dig the bottom corners of the screen. The barriers, just what are they? That’s your only means of blocking in the game…… and they’re limited. This is probably the first fighting game that foolishly punishes the player for… playing defensively, and this kind of madness started ramping up in fighting games of the last generation (easier guard breaks, guard crushes, etc.). You see, you have only 5 barriers that are weak. Once they’re all gone, you’re completely defenseless. I thought I’d never see the day when a fighter would feature micromanagement of your basic blocking functions. It’s even worse when you find out that the game allows you to enter a special “EX” mode where you spend 2 barriers just to attack wildly nonstop. Oh, and if you’re blocking and the opponent grabs you? You lose that barrier as well.

My small ass frame, and they give me nothing but PAPER to defend myself with!? Do you see how BIG his fucking hands are, man!?

All this means that the game expects you to be on the offensive, which wouldn’t be an issue if the controls weren’t drunk. It almost feels like playing Brawl. The creators thinking “the game is for FUN!” and removes all semblance of strategy and skill in order to emphasize the “FUN”. The difference between this and brawl is that, yeah, it actually IS fun in spite of all these facts. In the end, that’s all that really matters. Or it should. The problem is the game has no real longevity. Because of it’s wonky mechanics, it becomes less fun over time. Almost quickly.

Especially when you take it up the ass on occasion.

Unlike most other genres, fighting games NEED decent gameplay just to be sustainable and fun, and as much as I want to be biased, Sonic Championship doesn’t cut it. Sure, it’s better than any other Sega fighter they’ve made, but it’s still just as iffy. Bottom line, Sega makes crappy fighting games, and THE FIGHTERS is another, unfortunate example.

It serves the purpose of maybe passing the time and getting a few laughs out of it, but overall couldn’t take attention away from even the worst of fighters.

 

Returning to Zero Gravity

A toast to everyone who’s been having a ball grillin the ever loving shit out of Sonic Boom! Savin me ALL kinds of trouble and piss that I could be using to kill those damn cats who keep singing at night!

Anywho, seeing all the turmoil erupting after the bust, there’s been like this… mass awakening going on. Sonic fans starting to smell the coffee and realizing that “hey, Sega’s REALLY fucking up the sonic series, we iz doomed!” Sure is nice of them to get over their unwarranted self importance to start caring about the actual products rather than their status as fans.

That being said, I started to dig out every Sonic game I’ve owned to go on a crying train about where it all went wrong.

Holy crap, I still have this game!?

Back in grade school, I thought this was the second racing game that took actual skill to beat (the first being F-Zero GX) seeing the amount of actions you had to take during a race to ensure victory. Course, by the time I learned all the nuances, I just used power characters and abused their easy shortcuts. Power characters had it easy (or at least Knuckles did). Breaking through everything while maintaining their top speed was a joy.

Playing it now, I realize that there isn’t any real skill involved. It’s actually very petty micromanagement strapped into a racing game. You have to be careful not to use so much air during a race, collect a shit load of rings to carry more air, do several million tricks and character specific actions to gain more air, and hope no one kicks your ass which would cost you all your air. Sonic Riders was a racing game with zero margin for error and almost no accessibility whatsoever, it’s a wonder that I even liked the game back then. Wait, I had a gamecube, I had really shitty taste back then. I even thought Wind Waker was worth anyone’s time…..

Thinking about it now, I started to actually miss some of the improvements in Zero Gravity. Not having to hold down the jump button just to actually “jump” and get bigger air from ramps was one, not having to manage air was another. Luckily, Gamestop sells Wii games at all time lows so hurray $12 games! It’s not everyday that I give a game a second chance (giving Injustice a second chance atm). Trying to think exactly what I did not enjoy about it. After about 4 weeks I got rid of the game, I didn’t even want it in my collection.

Zero Gravity was a sequel of demands and deterrents in itself. It had plenty of improvements like the aforementioned jumping controls, the music is way better, and there aren’t any silly QTE’s mid race like having to spin the control stick to gain air while riding a pulley. Never made much sense to begin with. Not every action you do drains your GP meter like it did for air, and catching rails with speed characters isn’t such a pain in the ass. If anything, Zero Gravity was a more convenient game.

The thing that pissed me off, however, was the changes to how characters and gear worked. Characters no longer had their abilities based on their types (Speed, Fly, Power categories were removed) so everything they could do was entirely gear dependent. Chapped my ass since I usually gave knuckles Grinder shoes so I could have the abilities of smashing things and riding rails. Unfortunately, in this game, that is virtually impossible without the “omnipotence” gear you get. It wasn’t too big of a deal considering that you could play your favorites without worrying if they’ll get decent shortcuts… but then Sega pulled this “gear change” shit.

In Riders 1, you had a leveling system where by collecting rings in acquirements of 20, you could increase the max amount of air you carried as well as gaining access to new attacks. To explain, boosting up someone’s ass allowed you to perform different attacks based on your air level, for example Knuckles would roar at someone, but leveling up would allow him to punch someone.

In this game? No such thing as leveling exists. Instead, you gain access to gear changes that you have to change into mid race. Collecting rings from 20 to 50 to 75 instead of the 20-40-60 for some reason gets you these changes. The problem? The gear’s ability to access short cuts (like rails or flight rings) is tied… to the fucking gear changes. So you can’t really gain any access to these areas until maybe the second lap of the race. It seemed like a really stupid means of “balancing the game” by forcing you to swallow rings before you can access any meaningful short cuts. But this cuts into another issue. Performing gear changes actually depletes your rings, so if you were hasty and performed your first gear change, you’d have a much longer time to collect rings and get to your second and 3rd gear changes. This combined with the fact that if you fall into a pit, you lose all your rings anyway, so that’s an even longer wait. Plus, you still need rings to buy new gear.

What’s this all mean? The micromanagement aspect is STILL present. And if anything, they made it much WORSE in this game by virtue of the gear change system. All of he races in this game become nothing more than mad dashes to collect rings and not much else because that’s the only real “skill” needed to play this game. Every other mechanic was simplified to the point of absurdity that farming rings is the only real goal of the game.

And I mean simplified. You can’t even friggin boost in this game. The one move that most racing games would have for players to quickly catch up with their rivals was strangely removed from ZG. Why? They had to make way for the “gravity boost” and “gravity dive” features. 2 moves that are actually more of a hindrance than a plus. Gravity Boost is basically like drift, however, in that you only really use it to navigate 90 degree sharp ass turns that crop up in every race. And after the super special “beat dropping” dubstep crap is over, you get a really shoddy boost doesn’t even propel you far enough to catch up to anyone. It’s not even viable to exploit. Then you get the Gravity Dives which are… slightly more useful, but in select areas. It starts off like the boosts accept the beat drop moments have a fixed time frame, and you actually do bypass your rivals. You’re really just flying in the air. But… the amount of speed you gain starts to dwindle about half-way and it’s a total bitch to control. It’s not suitable to use this on any part of the road that isn’t straight as your character can only move on-rails. It’s only useful on select parts of the course where you can find large pieces of debris the “slide boost” on. IE if you touch any of these debris, your character gets a sudden boost of speed. And since there’s plenty of debris on the road, you have plenty of boosts at your disposal.

…..Then it hit me. Seeing how gravity boosts and dives are practically used in every race at very specific portions of the course, how your ability to access short cuts was heavily limited, and how there’s no real boost function all led me to one conclusion. Sega took control away from me. It shouldn’t have taken me this long to realize just how completely scripted the courses felt until I started not giving a shit and played the game more relaxed than usual and noticed that all the gravity dive sections appeared near the end of each lap. This wasn’t a racing game at all. It was Sega’s personal experimentation project with features they never properly ironed out… but felt necessary to force you to experience before gaining access to your precious gear exclusive short cuts. Since most Gear-Cuts take you around the gravity sections of the race often, you would have less incentive to use gravity boosts and dives. And why would you? Gravity boosts are a complete liability that can cost you a race if you so much as fuck up an inch in trying to catch a wall or a sharp corner. Gravity boosts would be nice if you didn’t slow waaaaaaaay down while activating it. This would give opponents the chance to catch up with you and pass you while you’re still trapped in middair. It’s absolutely absurd and moronic for any racing game to force a mechanic on you that actually hinders your ability to stay in the lead. To use gravity boosts without losing your place requires that there be no opponents within 5 miles from your rear. And using gravity boosts to do wall runs is even more risky as those shortcuts don’t really ensure victory either. Gravity Dives would’ve been more useful had the game not make them only functional on straight roads or be purposefully designed to work on one section (and one section only) of a course.

This combined with no actual ability to catch up with your opponents (and having no boosting mechanic either) makes this a racing game that is dependent on sheer… dumb… luck. Yes. You have no real control over how to actually win a race, you just have to pray. Between having to amass several rings to be able to do anything combined with the utterly useless gravity features that Sega tried ever so hard to promote, makes this a game that is damn near unplayable without some yac to go along with the sadness. Now granted, they do have gears that already have Gear-Cut abilities unlocked at the start, which would be fine if they actually performed well in comparison to the default gears the characters are given. All to balance them out, no less. >_>

I initially sold the game due to not having a means of playing catch up, but decided to try and use the “awesome features” the game provided you with this time. Turns out, they don’t fucking work to your advantage. There are zero benefits to using zero gravity. It’s a Nintendo experimentation game masquerading as a racing game, and it shows. The design choices are completely baseless and without reason. More pointless micromanagement than anyone ever needed, and just an overall SLOW racing game in general. It’s just not fun. When you know you’re not in control of a race 100% of the time and you spend more time scavenging for rings than actually competing against other racers, there is no such thing as a fun factor. And to think, they could’ve taken the courses, the music, even the tired story, modified them all and made a regular ass Sonic game where you’re going around kicking meteotech robot ass. People wouldn’t even be kissing Sonic Colors’s ass because the techno-dreamworld Sonic game would’ve been made back in 07. Instead, we got a shallow racer that thinks it’s Sonic Shuffle 2.

*sigh* too bad. It had a sweet ass sound track.

Sooooooooooooo much wasted potential…..

A Frustrating Epiphany

My last post before departing again.

Well… now that Sonic Boom’s so-called “Rise” and immediate Fall came and gone like RGIII’s career, the Sonic fandom has to be feeling a much stronger level of remorse and frustration. It is much more disturbing to find that much more people feel that it is time for Sega to take it’s pooch out behind the barnyard and pump 2 barrels in it’s cranium.

To hear that the latest game in the Sonic series is almost “condescending” and treats all of it’s audiences like babies where as before, the series used to treat it’s audiences like adults (Casino levels and polluted power plants, especially) is jarring and offensive. But it is what it has come to be. People have never been so certain that the series needs an indefinite break.

But the truth is this. Sega will continue making Sonic games that will decline greatly in quality for each and every installment they pump out. And for most of us, it’s a difficult pill to swallow. As typical of fans, many want to stay around, hoping things will get better and Sega will get it’s act together. Others firmly believe that this is infact Sega’s “act” so to speak.

For many people in America, there is a newly entrenched and sweeping belief that corporations are machines that destroy things for profit. Most people had already figured this out, but it could’ve fooled you as many Americans annoyingly defended corporations for decades as a bastion of ambition and quality. The act of obtaining profits and material wealth was more important to the American psyche than anything else. The American Dream was all about material wealth “without strings attached” as they imply. After the BP oil spill, Americans started waking up to the realities of just how dangerous corporations really are. They are giant machines filled with sociopathic cogs, if you will, that believe all of humanity are jut warm bodies to extract wealth from. It fills me with delight that people around these are actually starting to fight back against corporate fuckery of this country, one small step at a time. Even hollywood is being fought against (though not as strongly).

There’s only one sector of the population that is still in honeymoon mode with corporations and that is the gaming population. We are still only people who will defend the practices of these companies even with their disastrous performances. When you start to detect a huge dip in quality for many of your favorite franchises, it’s done for the purpose of money. When businesses destroy something, it is for money.

In Sega’s instance, they have destroyed their company image and their mascot for the same exact reason. Think about it this way. Why do they continue to make retro collections of Sonic 1, 2, and 3 every console generation or so? I think an episode of Futurama touched upon this, actually. Some product called “Slurm” was a soft drink that came out of a slug’s ass. Literally. They had plans to turn leila (Some cyclops chick, I think that’s the bitch’s name) into a slug so that they could extract slurm from her. Though one worker noted that because she isn’t a natural slug, her slurm would taste fowl.  The queen said this was a good thing because they could turn around and make something called “new slurm”. Then when people were done hating it, they could turn around and make “slurm classic” and rake in millions.

Sega is using the same exact tactic.

Sonic games continue to be shit, so the frustrated masses would run to the games of higher quality… which are now over 25 years old. We get a taste of New Sonic and it tastes like cornbread. Sonic Classic makes us feel like fat fucks in a cookie store. As long as people feel they can go back and rebuy the old Sonic titles over… and over…. and over again, the more Sega feels justified in destroying Sonic over…. and over again.

It’s never been more clear at this point that Sega could not give a fuck about their customers or fans. It is when we can officially dub them a corporation on the same sociopathic scale as Comcast, BP, Wal-Mart, Capcom, most telecom companies, etc. Nothing speaks more volumes of this than their habitual and pathological lies regarding Sonic… and PSO2. Everyone who has played Sonic Boom can instantly feel that they’ve been lied to. It’s like every game they put out, there is a load of PR marketing that make the games out to be much greater than they are, and of course none of it actually worked because the games looked horrible from the get go. No amount of PR bullshit can make future Sonic games look sexier than 06. Sega used a LOT of nasty tricks to make Boom look better than it is. All those photos of BRB’s offices filled with Boom concept art is a trick to make people think they were “hard at work” trying to make the best game possible. You always need to be suspicious with any game production that has more “fluff” interviews than they do footage of actual gameplay. If you’re shown more about the people than their actual work, it’s best to stay away as they’re concerned about image rather than talent. Other times, they take the exact words of forum goers and use those exact words to advertise their next games (IE, the promises and lies in a nutshell). There are enough examples out there going on about Sonic’s glorious return to his “roots” than I could count on a finger. Then there’s the issue with Mike Bollocks (hehe), some 50+ grandpa fighting with people over the internet to defend Boom. Using an authority figure is probably one of the nastiest tactics you could use in any industry as people are afraid of authority as though it were the police.

But this is the kind of shit corporations do to woo the masses to their side. They get “people” to talk poetically about how awesome they are, and then turn around and screw everyone over. Like fracking, I recall a commercial, it was all black and white and had this old fart talk about the process of finding gas in rocks with some choice lines like “all it takes is an idea” or some inspirational shit that has no weight to it. When come find that fracking is harmful to the environment, the illusion of a beautiful new industry is broken.

W/e they use, it means they don’t give a fuck about you. Only their silver lining. Fans of Atlus have every reason to piss themselves in fear as it means Sega will destroy their own products for profit. Sega’s evolution to a corporate shitlord is unlike that of Nintendo, Capcom, Square, Namco, or any other company that has attained shitlord status. Sega is downright evil. I can’t think of any other game company that has erected wall between themselves and their customers thicker and sturdier than Sega.

The dilemma comes in the form of how Sonic can still be so iconic and memorable while having a stream of terrible games nonstop. Crash Bandicoot, Bomberman, who cares? Sonic? “Man I remember having that on the Genesis!” It’s impressive how many people can recall fond memories of the classics and not be aware that games are still being made. For those that do keep up, it has to be damned frustrating just knowing it’s going to get many times worse from here on out, yet still want to support and/or keep up with the series. We wish we knew how to quit it. Not quitting means in part supporting the very devils that control the series. There’s no petty feeling worse than knowing the stuff you love is controlled by sociopaths. If you want Sonic, you have to go to people that want to destroy it for money. How can you enjoy a series that keeps getting worse? It’s impossible to do, so obviously you have to give up on it. But you just don’t wanna!

There’s always the fan games, but gamers have been trained to love production values over substance, so there’s that dilemma. The comics are being rebooted to crap, so there’s another dilemma. No worth while cartoons either. I wouldn’t even count on that live-action movie doing any good for the series. Even if it turned out to be good, that gives Sega another excuse to sell garbage “New Sonic” to kids while creating “Sonic Classic” to quell the immediate backlash. It’s a “Sonic Cycle” of their own creation.

What is one to do for an icon that deep down… no one wishes to hate?

*sigh* And… that’s it for my vacation. Much appreciated for those bringing me up to speed on everything going on with Sonic Boom as well as Smash 4. Will probably be back for Christmas if me crappy job is willing. Cya darls!

Cross Media Blunder

Yah damn skippy it do!

I just watched a few episodes of Sonic Boom and all of the cutscenes for the game, a few instances of omega glitches and… I just got one question.

Episode 4 where Sticks (Marine) is given a lecture on how to treat animals. Idk about you mother fuckers… but… Sticks… IS… an animal. Right? Why do they give a fuck!? It’s as though the writers forgot the fact that these bitches have long wagging dicks sticking out from their butts that pretty much indicate that… yeah, they’s be some animals.

Through out all of this nonsense, I kept asking myself… when does the stupidity ever end? I feel like I’ve had a near-death experience just merely watching crap. No wait, I did die. The 7 year old in me died. Not only that, but these “productions” dug my 7 year old up and pissed all over him, then double donged the corpse. I don’t think even the guys from Sonic Dissected can decipher just what in the fresh fuck was going on in these gigs.

Sonic Boom is like Iron Man 2. A soulless production that is on rails. No rhyme, rhythm, or reason. Reason being the key word here as you will be left demanding one for everything wrong with this game.

-Why the random design changes? (as always)
-Why the overuse of bad comedy relief at every… single… opportunity?
-Why was Shadow even in this game?
–And why is he opposed to the concept of “friendship” all of a sudden? Must’ve seen one too many Animes.
-Why does Amy’s man jaw look like a swollen cunt?
-Why does Sticks even matter in this series?
-Why the College Art Project level of crappy animation?
–Why does Knuckles not know his left from his right!?
-Why is Lyric called Lyric? He doesn’t even sing. 😛
-Why does a crappy, buggy, and clearly unfinished video game tie-in have much better quality compared to a cartoon!?
-Why does it feel like the characters have no real personality?
-Why does it seem like all the fucking hype put forward by BRB and Sega was hot air? Every… last… word I might add.

Well…. shit, I don’t know

Whatever the case, the honeymoon is over and the fans got the taste smacked out of their mouths once again by the reality of the franchise’s state. These are the kinds of games that make many of us feel old in how people can even bother putting up a defense for trash. Even though I see no one defending the games besides Sega’s shills. They always provide shitty arguments. It would take a herculean effort to find any meaningful potential in this game.

I mean look at this shit. A Ratchet character, Sega’s rendition of Nurse Joy, and a cowboy that doesn’t do shit in the game (true story).

It’s making me cry! What potential could be derived from this drek of a toon? There’s literally nothing here. Even just to rant about, I don’t feel it’s even warranted. It speaks for itself. My interest in Sonic Boom was literally non-existent for a long time because there was literally nothing special beyond the PR/Shill hype. I mean hell, I’ve been proven wrong on the show even having any kind of chance, that shit’s ratings are in the crapper.

Going through the scenes, it feels as though the game has no sense of cohesion or enough exposition to explain many of the nuiances of the game. Sure you don’t need to explain everything, but when you get to a point where the main villain can pull shit out of his ass (like being able to use ancient technology to control a modern day robot like Metal Sonic without any upgrades or prior knowledge of Robotnik’s own weapons), tis the time to go right the fuck back to the drawing board. It’s bad enough that the characters try so hard to be funny at every single opportunity, but it’s even worse when characters are over-exaggerated and/or have zero personality whatsoever. IE Knuckles and Shadow being the exaggeration, and Sonic, Tails, and Amy having no personality. To make matters worse, characters will randomly use slang terminology with no comedic set ups (seriously, what the fuck does “SPIT-BALLIN” mean… and why is it used 1000 years IN THE PAST!?). These people know fuck all about comedic timing.

For comedy to work properly, there has to be a certain level of shock value and consistent relevance to the character’s personalities involved with the comedic situation at hand. It has to be smart and clever. Comedy gold requires intelligent use of situations. You know how some people can come up with some wild comments for some given situations like a bank robbery or a fight in a store? That’s how the writers should be thinking!

For example, take Jak 2 where at the beginning of the game, Jak and Daxter escape from a high level KG facility after nearly being killed by gun and cannon fire. Daxter’s choice of words?

Daxter: UGH! That’s too much excitement! I wish we were back in the country!

…Well that was funny to me. Or how about the scene in which Daxter (after facing misfortune of having a pipe stuck on his head after attempting to show off his strength) decides to let Jak pull a stiff lever. What happens is that Daxter still gets something dropped on him.

Daxter: “It’s a curse, isn’t it!?”

Or a better example, from Ice Age 2, you have a pack of vultures singing a song “FOOD! GLORIOUS FOOD!” talking about eating the main characters. But… the sloth or whoever gets the song stuck in his head and starts fucking singing it. “What? It’s catchy!”

THAT SHIT IS ACTUALLY FUNNY! Ok?! I don’t know who the hell the writers were but they have to be the most dull and lifeless mother fuckers to have ever walked this earth. The very first scene that they try to be funny in involves Knuckles not knowing the difference between left and right. Not only is this insulting to fans of the character pre-2003, it’s also not fucking funny or clever. You can’t do comedy without the right level of cleverness and creativity. It makes the writers out to be a bunch of dumb fuck shut-ins who haven’t taken a nice trip outside to get a breath of fresh air. Their brains could use a little oxygen for Amma’s sake. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be able to write for shit! Which pretty much explains the rampant idiocy of the plot. Why exactly is Shadow fighting Sonic in the first place? How the fuck can Lyric take control of Metal Sonic using outdated tech!? Why is it that Tails couldn’t prevent that stupid enerbeam to NOT revert back into a binding ring!? Infact, since the Enerbeams technically have “manual controls”, how is it that Lyric can still control them while not being able to do shit about Robotnik’s giant ugly suit!? Why do they try so hard to make Knuckles retarded beyond my wildest nightmares!? Who the hell is Cliff and what does he do that is any bit useful for the game?

I don’t even need to go over everything that’s wrong with the game. Everyone called it, and someone already saved me the trouble. This mother fucker deserves a medal and a lap dance from Nisha the Lawbringer. What really needs to be addressed is the amount of damage this further incurs on the franchise. This being “The year of Sonic” ends in a spectacular disaster to no one’s surprise. All people can really do is question just what is going on, and hope that some Capcom level of financial trouble bites them in the ass soon. All this corporation is doing is pissing on the grave. There is only so many times you can end the life of a once-beloved video game character before people ask “when will it die”? You know a series should end when more people are demanding it. If that’s Sega’s way of killing off the series by deliberately making people HATE it with extreme prejudice, then man, they’s be some vicious mother fuckers.

So… who’s qualified to make a Sonic game now?

Tales of the Borderlands should’ve just been a bunch of actual movies, not some episodic downloads of interactive movies. And I’m getting just fucking tired of Handsome Jack. If the rest of the Borderlands series is going to be about him, count me out.

I can’t imagine a more tasteless admission of defeat. Now all Sega needs to do is get rid of Mike Bollocks and we can have Robotnik being awesome again…. I think.

To hear that Boom has technical errors worse than 06 is surprising considering how well Sega’s been doing polishing their turds to fool people into thinking their games are worth anyone’s time. And Goddamn, you know a product is ass when a chunk of assholes don’t even stick around to finish it. It feels like Sega’s big merchandising plan is collapsing before retailers can get a single toy out of the deal. Namco got lucky. Hearing all the reasons for this massive turnover will be more epic than Sonic X-Treme’s development. Hell, even Sega knew the game was shit. If you have to stoop so low as to revoke what is essentially the right of free press to review your product… to avoid tarnishing your company’s image anymore than you already have, I don’t know what to say. Wait, yes I do. Congrats Sega, you’ve evolved from Dreamcast to Comcast!

So much for the fanboy’s BS on Ex-Naughty Dog folks being any good for Sonic. I would go far to say anyone who thinks the people behind Jak and Daxter have talent probably have no taste whatsoever, but that would be arrogant and I’m sure the amount of retorts would contain the words “Last of Us” because the people behind that game would totes be caught dead on a project like this. Would you trust Sonic in the hands of people that wanted to turn Robotnik some school boy nerd!?

Piss in me eye! Why are these even concepts for Robotnik in the first place!?

These are not the kind of people you would trust with anything resembling your childhood. I wouldn’t trust them with Bay’s rendition of the Ninja Turtles. Hollywood seems to be the only slaughterhouse that can get away with radically changing the appearance of iconic characters, and have no one bat an eye. This leads me to believe that in some dark part of the game industry’s psyche, they want to be more like Hollywood so they can make trash and do as they damn well please. I think games having such steep prices jolts a good dose of high standards in consumers that we haven’t reached a point where we sit back and allow some random jackass’s “vision” to get in the way of our entertainment.

But this is worse than I thought.

For a development team to up and say “fuck it” 6 months in advance and quit the project says a lot. They probably didn’t want their names to be tarnished just in case they get the opportunity to work on something they think is worth their time. Or something! Kinda creepy this happens right when I lose internet access…

So, it’s been proven that BRB and Nintendo are both unreliable in making a Sonic game, and Sega is yet again fixated on making money to notice. If western developers basically show no interest in developing a Sonic game, it shows how far the series has fallen. Many western devs still hold Mario games (even the shitty 3D ones) in their highest regards, but I bet no one wants to even mention Sonic in any of it’s incarnations. If we can’t rely on Nintendo or a Western developer to make a good Sonic game, then who can!? Don’t say the fan projects. Yes, they’re sexy and Freedom Planet looks damned delicious, but I’m talking people who are actually involved in the industry. All the talented people in the industry show no desire in Sonic to care about it’s quality. You will get more feedback about a Zelda game’s lacking quality than that of Sonic. The younger teams (like Ninja Theory and the like) seem to be a bunch of college idiots with all these wild visions of particular franchises that don’t at all seem to be particularly concerned with meeting or exceeding expectations. So we can’t rely on new blood either.

To drive that point further, the store I work at has a high turnover rate of employees, so I get to see lots of fresh faces in as little as a month. One particular coworker is a poor shmuck shackled with student debt. He’s also a nerd with poor diction. Breathtaking, isn’t it? Anywho, he’s one of the yahoos that’s an aspiring game developer who hasn’t had any time to work on his pet projects due to trying to pay off his debt. It’s hard not to feel sorry for the guy because it seems like he’s not going to ever get that dream job of his, and even if he does, it’s gonna beat his ass in the long haul. Even then, like most nerds, he argues about the potential of Boom being a good game regardless of all the issues presented. And this was before the game was released.

Of particular note, he felt that fans of the series were problematic and difficult to please, being as fans can be “picky” or overly demanding, and could cause the erosion of a particular series. At one point, he cited Dragon Ball as an example. The series kept continuing on into the Dreaded Cell and Buu sagas because fans wanted more when the series was supposed to end with Frieza. While I could sympathize considering I hated everything Cell Saga and up, blaming it on the fans is a red harring. Significant demand requires sufficient talent to meet the demand. If you’re not up to the task of meeting demand, pass the torch to someone who can and will.

Because of that situation, it’s probably best to never plan on an official “ending” to any series you make. You just might be forced to create more and more. Miyamoto never wanted to make another 2D Mario after World and was quoted as “making every game as if it were your last” in some dire hope of not having to be bothered again.

People are always gonna be passionate about a series they have a planned vision for, not when they’re simply told to make more and more crap for it. The quality will take a noticeable dip, but nah. That ain’t the fans fault. The company itself decided to make more shit. Therefore, it’s solely their responsibility.

But according to said nerd, it’s that people are “too had to please”. He is definitely not the kind of person you want in the industry. But we already have those kinds of people! That’s the fun part. And many of them happen to be a little too power hungry for anyone’s good. And since everyone is so hyper active in creating their own shitty versions of existing mythos, we can’t expect any good to come to Sonic from any external force. Again, Sonic has no business existing in this day and age. There’s too many cards stacked against it, and little to no hope of a recovery.

And I’m starting to feel like w/e good ideas the FANS on the internet have, Sega will just skim them and use them as some asshole selling point proclaiming that they “listened to fans” while creating a turd nugget of a product yet again. No one felt like Sega’s been pulling this kind of shit yet? Every time you get a certain amount of demand for Sonic to be a certain way, the immediate next Sonic game has “something resembling what fans asked for” but it turns out to be ass which further dehumanizes the fans and makes it seem like the fans don’t know what they want? Or is it just me? I mean everyone kept demanding a 2D Sonic game, Sonic 4 is shit, or Nintendo make a Sonic game and they kinda sorta did that with Lost Mind, then I came up with the idea of a western team to do Sonic right, and that blew over worse than anyone could imagine, it’s like Sega is creating false flags to crap over fans or something. Because the same company that was raking in dough from PSO2 would not be that stupid to constantly fuck up their mascot series.

 

I’m getting ahead of myself. I had been informed that some of those BRB members were fired midway through the project, possibly due to low funds. Which kinda makes sense seeing as not one of those ugly ass toys have arrived on store shelves yet. The other bunch left on their own accord. I don’t know how much Sega blew on this endeavor, but if they rolled bitches out that fast, either they lost faith on the project, rushed it to keep the deadline on releasing it with that stupid cartoon, or they wanted to desperately get out of this Nintendo exclusivity deal fast. “HERE! JUST PUT THE DAMN GAME OUT, THE SOONER WE GET THIS DONE, THE SOONER WE CAN ESCAPE THIS MAD HOUSE!” You’d have to be really suspicious of a corporation when they start trying to hide their products from reviewers. That reeks of them having no intent on fixing the series. It really is just a profit generating machine for them, and a really dodgy one at that. All this nonsense about targeting younger demographics, removing games from store shelves with bad reviews, and hiding review copies to keep people in the dark until the game comes out is dirty as shit. If anything, I can’t blame those BRB legions that left. Sega has become a real monster of a corporation. Their behavior since 2008 is no short of amazing and bewildering.

Still, no excuse to make crap designs and leave a game unfinished, but understandable to some degree. In either case, we can really say Sonic is doomed for any future game that comes out as it seems no company that exists has any vested interest in the series to crap out a decent product. And because all the real talent exists in the non-credential sectors of the globe, The only place a Sonic fan could call home is the PC. Kinda scary for a once Arcade Centric franchise to get personal…

I really gotta work on better closing remarks. More and more, I’m starting to think back to that one guy who suggested copyright law be abolished. Sure, the only franchise that would benefit from that would be Sonic, but hell, we here in America like to think that competition is healthy for… some reason. Why not get rid of laws that exist only to protect corporate interests when they damn sure don’t care about OUR interests, rite? That’ll promote lots of competition! If companies weren’t such greedy pussies. I’d like to think Sega would step their game up if the fans were allowed to financially compete against them.

Oh Amma, I love this song…

Negativity (honestly had no good title for this one)

Man, I am so fucking stoked for Mortal Kombat X, you don’t know! It’s got smoother gameplay, it’s got these variants that look tight (hopefully Sub-Zero has one where he doesn’t suck for once), it’s got Kotal Khan lookin like Star Platinum from Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure mang, and the run… button? From MK3?

Those moments of interacting with the environment are limited by a small stamina meter below each fighter’s health bar, which has been designed to limit overuse of those moves.

What!?

the stamina meter is a new addition to Mortal Kombat X that does a few specific things. As I mentioned earlier, it restricts how frequently you can use background objects. The meter is divided into two sections, and using an object drains one of the sections.

No!

Back dashing also drains one of the sections.

Please!

Running forward–another new mechanic–drains the stamina meter, but at a slow rate.

Why are you doing this!?

the team is experimenting with letting players use stamina to perform throw canceling.

WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY! OH THE INHUMANITY!

Micromanagement!? In Mortal Kombat!? Fuck that shit son! Boon! Don’t fuck it up! I was starting to like this series! I feel like Leo Dicaprio in the Wolf of Wallstreet when he screamed “GODDAMMIT!!!” Is Boon catering to Eventhubs or SRK? I don’t even know anymore, it just seems like anytime a developer thinks about competitive balance, it’s mostly to appease the “maniac players”. Anything put into a game to “reduce abuse” is mostly dictating how the players play. And amazingly enough, despite how stupid the FGC can be, they HATE being hindered in how they get to play a game. Amazingly enough, that stopped the Smash community from bowing to the whims of Nintendo when they pulled that shit with Brawl, changing all the mechanics to keep the “maniacs” from enjoying it, killing the enjoyment for everyone in the long run. All Boon had to do was make interactables blockable (which they did anyway!). Now the team is making them absolutely pointless in the long run. Not that I care about interactables as they were just “lol” type shit anyway, but back dashing!? There’s fucking meter burning from back dashing!? You’re fucking serious!?

It’s a curse, isn’t it!? Every time I like something, the sequel is bound to blow chunks!

In the words of a Zafford: “Piss in me eyes!!” You know what’s sad though, I’d still buy the damn shit.

Oh right, this was supposed to be about that pasty tea bag from Sega.

*Sigh*… it speaks for itself, I might as well not even comment. Fortunately, someone else had a sip of “REAL TALK” coffee.

Yeaaaaaaaaah, FUCK BOOM! Oh 1:50 cameo!

How awesome was that!? It’s like these guys come in with their zany ideas, and when people start to reject them after quote “years and hours of politics and ego”, they start going on the defensive, rationalizing everything from the designs to mechanics. Instead of learning how to actually sell people on a game, they tell people to play the waiting game instead.

It’s really funny when people go out of their way to shun all criticism as some form of “negativity”. That’s beautiful. To be labeled a negative nancy is a compliment than to be labeled some self-righteous jackass who goes around telling people to swallow any kind of shit when people pop off at the mouth about how much work was put into something. If the world honestly gave a damn about how much work one puts into something, I’d probably be writing hollywood movies right about now. People care only about their own self interests. If your “hard work” benefits them in some tangible way, then they will care.

BRB’s problem is that they’re so caught up in trying to be “different” rather than beneficial. You can’t get anymore pretentious than that. But their trailer for the game spoke volumes within the first few seconds of announcing that Robotnik wasn’t the true villain! Robotnik hasn’t been the main villain since 98. The real antagonist of Sonic Colors was the script. I ask what the point was in needing to point out Robotnik being sidelined in favor of tree snake. Not to inform the public that Robotnik isn’t the real villain (it’s no surprise to anyone), but to make it known that it is “different”.

This desire to be different is a curse among western developers, it seems. At this point, western developers have been dominating game development, and it seems to be going to their heads. Now we have DmC’s and LOS’s running about with all these “different visions” that aren’t at all in line with the fan’s tastes, but are all desires to be different. Why does it exist? Most would say because these franchises are given to people who don’t really give a fuck about said franchise. And this almost always seems to be the case in the showbiz. Like Transformers being given to a guy who openly despises Transformers (I wonder how that douche feels about TMNT *shudders*)

Seems to be in European nature to make everything “in their own image“. In an unfortunate twist as Japanese games are falling out of favor on a global scale, they have the perfect justification. I curse my naivety in hoping a western developer could turn this franchise around, but I grossly underestimated the arrogance of the western industry on a whole. With the possible exception of Retro Studios (The real one, not that Bungee hybrid shit from 2004 and up), I can’t think of one westernized series that has kept the spirit of the series they worked on.

Then again, the western industries are destroying their own series (Iron Man was turned into a high school kid, teen titans is a full-blown comedy series), I guess western entertainment is self-destructive. It shouldn’t be destructive to Sonic as it’s western influences contributed greatly to it’s fame, and created legions of copy cats along the way. This is, instead, an exxageration of “western influence” due to one franchise that has nothing to do with anthro animals (Uncharted).

Still, I can’t help but feel it’s more the fault of trying to create a toy franchise. Merchandise driving begets mediocrity. Look at that Pac Man show. Now he’s a highschool student with a tapeworm! I thought Japan was obsessed with youth. And I swear, that show had a talking carrot with athletic gear on. It seems like all of Japan’s sectors are going ful frontal merchandise. Nintendo with their AB cards and figurines, Namco with their stupid Pac Man and card battle Soul Calibur, and Sega with their cashing in on Hatsune Miku and animu fighters.

The question is why can’t merchandise driven crap have the quality of Transformers, GI Joe and the like? The economy? Decent writers can’t possibly be expensive (then again, there IS a union :P). W/e the case may be, the low quality of the game will have consistency with the low quality of the show, and nothing BRB does will change that even if they were talented. What really concerns me is why Sonic fans are so easily convinced by this company that anything they say and do is fact? Do they know anything about the nature of entertainment? Or is their circle of entertainment so limited to children’s media that they openly accept even the worst offenders (Like MLP) and question absolutely nothing about why Sonic takes turns into what they do? Perhaps that is why Sega keeps making childish games, their only audience is so goddamned infantile, they’re easily fooled that something present at E3 is merely an alpha demo 5 months from a release date.

Happy Father’s Day, bitches. Please don’t fuck up MKX, Boon.