Sonic Boom

[Blades]

I don't think the Sonic Cycle even applies to this game. From the get go everyone hated it and knew it would suck.

Not necessarily.

I'm excited for this game, if only to see how it plays out to have a developer other than Sonic Team making the game. I don't think Sonic Team really understands how to make Sonic games anymore.
I'm hoping this game can have good gameplay despite the character designs (though I don't really have any major issues with it other than Knuckles chest being replaced with an oil drum). I'm not going to make judgments based on only a few seconds of gameplay footage.

Actually....ACTUALLY.....

I think this looks pretty good. I really can't judge from this little footage, but actually, the dub step fits the character, sonic kind of looks good in the ascot...thing, and tails and knuckles redesigns are good enough to pass. It's interesting that other studios are making this, and ones with pretty good track records at that. So I'm hoping it'll be good.

[Kogen]

[A Black Falcon]

Did you watch the lengthy gameplay video that was posted? It gives you a pretty good idea. Yes, watching a game isn't the same as playing it, but it's still informative.

I watched Giant Bomb's quicklook of the game. I think it looks like an okay kid-focused 2.5d/3d platformer. I'd probably find it fun. I didn't see anything really bad about it other than the framerate, and I'm no framerate-obsessed person...

[Pulstar]

Sonic is dead to everyone except kiddies and his furry fanbase.

[Kogen]

Do kids really play Sonic anymore?

I thought it was played by chronic masturbators and/or men in their mid-30s. Sonic on iOS, Racing Transformed, you know.

[Phexar]

http://nintendoeverything.com/big-re...c-boom-launch/

Big Red Button Entertainment suffered from staff losses before Sonic Boom launch

Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric is not a very good game. There are tons of glitches, some of which are game-breaking. The gameplay itself isn’t engaging. You could probably point out a bunch of other issues as well.

What exactly happened with Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric? While no one can say for sure, perhaps at least some of the problems stemmed from the departure of employees.

Liam Robertson from research site Unseen64 stated on Twitter yesterday (based on LinkedIn findings) that a number of Big Red Button Entertainment left the studio in July. Additionally, the original producer for Rise of Lyric moved on from the company in September 2013. Other employees who left Big Red Button Entertainment include senior designers and artists, the project manager, production assists, and more.

TSSZ news points out that if the Big Red Button Entertainment staff departures took place in July, then that would be when Rise of Lyric was heading towards the end of development. On the other hand, some say that something happened between builds shown early in the year and the final game that shipped this week.

Interesting, so they bled a whole bunch of staff a few months ago. Someone pointed out that Chris Senn, the director of Sonic X-treme, was one of those who left as well.

[Kogen]

Video game quality aside, quitting your project after you messed it up and leaving all the blame on your staff who only listened to you is pretty disgusting behaviour. This is what Sonic Team people like Yuji Naka did before.

If people like Chris Senn had any balls they would stay, admit their mistake, then try to do something about it, like patch the game or try to create an updated version. Chris Senn seems especially pathetic after he blamed Xtreme dying on other people. Maybe they never wanted him messing with their engine due to how unreliable he is.

[SperglordLava]

I'm sure whoever thought wrapping Sonic in toilet paper, Disproportionate Knuckles, Sticks the Jungle Badger, and using Shadow were good ideas is probably more unreliable than Chris Senn could ever be.

[A Black Falcon]

Sonic is dead to everyone except kiddies and his furry fanbase.

If this was true, no one would pay attention to Sonic games when they release. Instead, every one of them gets lots of attention, no matter its quality. Sonic clearly isn't deadf for that reason alone.

Do kids really play Sonic anymore?

I thought it was played by chronic masturbators and/or men in their mid-30s. Sonic on iOS, Racing Transformed, you know.

... I really hope you're joking, but this is crazy! Of course kids are the main audience of Sonic games. Adults mock the series constantly, and you think it still sells great to older audiences? No, children are definitely Sonic's main target audience. Not adults.

[Thunderblaze16]

Not real sure about this but someone stated,

"TSSZ recently reported that a number of staffers at Big Red Button (including the original producer) left the project as far back as last summer. Apparently the game was turning out so undesirably that they abandoned ship."

[miru]

Sonic is dead to everyone except kiddies and his furry fanbase.

No. Now he's dead even to those.


Sonic Boom was a complete tank. Hopefully SEGA stops the comedic plots and Sola Sonica.

[Kogen]

If this was true, no one would pay attention to Sonic games when they release. Instead, every one of them gets lots of attention, no matter its quality. Sonic clearly isn't deadf for that reason alone.

What you wrote fits the description of a fart.

... I really hope you're joking, but this is crazy! Of course kids are the main audience of Sonic games. Adults mock the series constantly, and you think it still sells great to older audiences? No, children are definitely Sonic's main target audience. Not adults.

Who do you think is playing Sonic on iOS? Those sell in the 10s of millions. Dash was at 65 million last I checked.

[A Black Falcon]

What you wrote fits the description of a fart.

How mature of you. To put it simply, dead series are dead -- they don't see new games released in them anymore. Sonic is not dead. It is alive because the character is still popular with enough people, and the games still sell enough, to justify keeping making them.

Who do you think is playing Sonic on iOS? Those sell in the 10s of millions. Dash was at 65 million last I checked.

I'm sure it has a wide audience, but many of them are surely children. Lots of kids have cellphones now, you know...

[j_factor]

I watched Giant Bomb's quicklook of the game. I think it looks like an okay kid-focused 2.5d/3d platformer. I'd probably find it fun. I didn't see anything really bad about it other than the framerate, and I'm no framerate-obsessed person...

How about the constant annoying dialogue (and monologues) that occurs throughout gameplay? That they can't even get the timing right on? Some of the lines are clearly too long for the situation that triggers them, making it so the voices can't keep up with the game. Inappropriate banter, such as "yay, more rings!" when the game maxes out rings at 100 and you already have 100. Miscued hint lines, such as "I bet I can break this wall", after you've already broken one of them. Your character chiming in each individual time when you have to do an identical task multiple times (hitting the switches that divert the beams that open the door). That's on top of such hints being unnecessary to begin with and overly hand-holding.

Aside from that, the level design is blasé at best from what I've seen, and the character design remains awful of course. The music made zero impression on me, and that's generally been a strong suit of the Sonic series. You switch between characters, but the differentiation between them doesn't seem very important; Sonic Heroes did that better, and that's not really a favorite of mine.

... I really hope you're joking, but this is crazy! Of course kids are the main audience of Sonic games. Adults mock the series constantly, and you think it still sells great to older audiences? No, children are definitely Sonic's main target audience. Not adults.

Of course Sonic sells to adults. Sonic 4, Sonic Generations, and various rereleases such as Sonic Classic Collection and Sonic CD are aimed more at an older audience. Sonic Boom is explicitly aimed more at a younger audience. Colors and Lost World are in between, aimed at both adults and children.

Platformers are almost never dark and gritty, violent, sexually suggestive, adults-only affairs. But adults still play them. Mario too. And Sly Cooper, Ratchet & Clank, DK Country... even Kirby. The genre has certainly declined from its peak in terms of commercial importance, but its audience isn't overwhelmingly kids. Except for licensed tie-ins. And on that note, perhaps we should be thinking of Sonic Boom more as a game based on a cartoon, and not so much as a Sonic game.

[A Black Falcon]

How about the constant annoying dialogue (and monologues) that occurs throughout gameplay? That they can't even get the timing right on? Some of the lines are clearly too long for the situation that triggers them, making it so the voices can't keep up with the game. Inappropriate banter, such as "yay, more rings!" when the game maxes out rings at 100 and you already have 100. Miscued hint lines, such as "I bet I can break this wall", after you've already broken one of them. Your character chiming in each individual time when you have to do an identical task multiple times (hitting the switches that divert the beams that open the door). That's on top of such hints being unnecessary to begin with and overly hand-holding.

So much about the speech... that's not gameplay, what matters the most in a game is the actual game! As for the voice stuff, I didn't notice timing issues. That "yay, more rings" line was kind of funny; I thought it was so dumb that they kept playing that same sound effect, including for pickups that weren't even rings; it was amusing. As for the game playing voice samples too often, yeah, it seems to, but that's minor; just repeating voice samples too often doesn't make a game bad. A bit annoying, maybe, but not bad. Shining Force Neo was a good game even despite how crazy-often those voice samples repeated, for example.

As for gameplay stuff, the whole coin limit is kind of dumb though, yeah. Why put so many coins in the level when these stages have few obstacles that can damage you and you max out at 100? Kind of dumb. That video was mostly in the tutorial stages, though, so I'd judge the game a bit more harshly if they kept doing that much later in the game. Having coins as health isn't too bad of an idea, but there should be some point of collecting them past 100... ah well.

Aside from that, the level design is blasé at best from what I've seen, and the character design remains awful of course. The music made zero impression on me, and that's generally been a strong suit of the Sonic series. You switch between characters, but the differentiation between them doesn't seem very important; Sonic Heroes did that better, and that's not really a favorite of mine.

The character designs look okay to me. I don't have a problem with them, honestly. It's a cartoony style, but it's not too bad. As for level designs and character switching, I'd need to see more of the game to tell how well those things are done. What I saw of it seemed bland, but not THAT terrible. And I like having character switching, even if they're similar.

Of course Sonic sells to adults. Sonic 4, Sonic Generations, and various rereleases such as Sonic Classic Collection and Sonic CD are aimed more at an older audience. Sonic Boom is explicitly aimed more at a younger audience. Colors and Lost World are in between, aimed at both adults and children.

Platformers are almost never dark and gritty, violent, sexually suggestive, adults-only affairs. But adults still play them. Mario too. And Sly Cooper, Ratchet & Clank, DK Country... even Kirby. The genre has certainly declined from its peak in terms of commercial importance, but its audience isn't overwhelmingly kids. Except for licensed tie-ins. And on that note, perhaps we should be thinking of Sonic Boom more as a game based on a cartoon, and not so much as a Sonic game.

Yeah, I think it'd be fair to say that this game is more kid-focused than most Sonic games. It sure seems to be that. However, children are absolutely always Sonic's target market. Sonic is only still popular because Sega is successful at getting children interested in Sonic, after all! If the series had few new young fans coming in, it wouldn't be nearly as popular as it is.