A Genuine Video About Sonic R

during my year long hiatus I went through a lot of my older uploads and notice that I have made mention to Sonic are a healthy number of times on this channel it's stupid now you just don't make them like Sonic are anymore but how about that music huh best sonic racing related title not that I had that much competition to begin with because I mean clearly there's something I've been dying to say about this game or at least I think I don't know I'm actually a little concerned how much you didn't mention my videos so you know what okay I think it's about time I let it all out of my system just for you guys here's a big old video about all things Sonic are a video patrons app or about people such as Abby Knutson Amanda Guth and pretoria Moore's thank you now let's do this so I can do what everyone else is already done just do a whole video should be on how broken this game is or whatever yeah well I think that's funny in its own right I'd rather give this game an honest look started to finish sonic r is an odd but unique game and I think it's about time we take an in-depth perspective on it on that note what better place to start than the game's inception [Music] initially sonic car was not supposed to be a Sonic game in fact the game at least in the way we know today wasn't supposed to exist whatsoever travelers tales to people behind Sonic 3d blast we're working on a formula one game for the Sega Saturn in order to compete with the extremely popular Formula One game released for the PlayStation in 1996 however they were approached by Sega to adapt the racing game they've been working on into a Sonic game see what happened was another Sonic game plan for the Sega Saturn own a sonic Xtreme was basically going through a development hell for a few years by that point due to the difficulty of programming code Saturn members of the team being fired and a number of other issues Sonic Xtreme was cancelled early 97 with Sonic Xtreme cancelled and with the Saturn being a bit of a failure as it was Sega was in real need of a Sonic game to fill the gap in for the whole days which is why it was decided the work travelers tales a dumper Formula One at that point will be repurposed into a Sonic game the project was overseen by sawing team also contributing some of the assets such as the models no travelers tales in most of the heavy lifting namely all the programming sync I made the decision of points travelers tales specifically because they were impressed with the team's work on games like Toy Story 4 Genesis and of course Sonic 3d blast say what you will about the actual quality of the games that worked on it was evident they do theirs when it came to Sega Hardware arguably even better than saying it themselves Sega's own Daytona USA was the tories for having very bad pop up that was harshly criticized even at the time whereas travelers tales made an engine for Sonic R so polygons would seemingly fade in as you got closer again they knew there's a that technique specifically which was referred to as 12 layers transparency alongside the presentation of the final product itself were highly praised at the time of its release no I'm not joking people are always cracking jokes about the game's visuals but magazines from 1997 or anything to go by sonic car was seen as a very impressive looking 7 game even during the game's early days of development people were already praising the visuals quote graphically Sonic are already looks fantastic with detail courses clean textures and amazing 12 layer transparency engine which cleverly disguises pop up another magazine even went as far as to say song 2 hedgehog returns in a stunning new racing title which takes Saturn visuals way past PlayStation performance damn needles to say travelers tales have done it they had converted their formula 1 racing game into a Sonic game within that year and just in time for the holidays but how did the game itself turn out well in stark contrast to what it said about Sonic R these days upon release Sonic R was actually made of decently favorable reviews' I'm serious computers and video games magazine listed it as our No Sega Saturn game and rewarded it with a four out of five the official Sega Saturn magazine was especially generous giving at ninety three percent out of 100 saying another incredible addition to the phenomenal Sonic series jaw-dropping graphics and classic Sonic Team gameplay combined to produce one of the best Saturn titles to date but all of that is what people were saying then I was a hold up now of all fruits and giggles let's start the story because I love talking about game narratives and games that absolutely don't need one and for the record one of them about the radio is coming straight from the official manual from this game Sonic and Tails are enjoying a little time off of the venturi the trip they planned will be a nice relaxing vacation or so they think tail spots a huge site alongside the road they are currently traveling on it is a recruiting advertisement for the world Grand Prix says Sonic thinks for a moment he is the world's fastest runner but participating in a race is not really his interest so being on the sign however catches Sonic's eye dr. Robotnik Sonic's arch enemy is participating in the race Sonic races off to the distance tail shots to his friend miles above the sign a spy satellite focuses on Sonic and Tails dr. Robotnik Snickers and delight saying now that you have fallen to my traps Sonic I will finally have the Chaos Emeralds and beat you at the same time with my new hover machine and these robots dr. Robotnik Finn looks to his left in a row of gleaming eyes looks back at him nothing can go wrong little the sonic know that dr. Robotnik has learned the location of the Chaos Emeralds but Sonic is not the only one who will be racing up dr. Robotnik Sonic's rival k'nuckles has learned that sonic will be participating in this very important race knuckles never turns down a chance to be around Sonic when the action starts Amy will be there too after secretly overhearing dr. Robotnik's plans she will also be racing to find the Chaos Emeralds and scene okay so let's digest this for a sec so there's a sign advertising some huge race something is like nah but then he finds out his arch nemesis is behind it and then he's like okay that sounds good to me wait the fact that Eggman is involved be more of a reason to stay away and furthermore why Durrell Botnick plan this race anyway if he knows the location of the Emerald why the would he invite sonic over to the row location instead of getting them himself how was this plant supposed to work knowing the location of the emeralds aside how he's beating Sonic at a race gonna help in any regard in a previous video I poked fun at the story for Sonic Riders for likewise being idiotic but for folks ain't as dumb as that was you could at least understand the premise meanwhile Sonic are over here wha-ha-ha i have located the Chaos Emeralds I must retrieve them before Sonic therefore my best line of action is invite him into a race so we may circle the track and potentially spy emerald or two nothing can possibly go wrong hahaha what anyways this story really has no bearing on the actual quality of the game in fact it's not even mentioned outside of the manual but I thought it was hilarious and I knew I need this share that with all of you so with that out of the way I think it's fair to start talking about what I used to think about Sonic or simply put as a very young and naive boy I thought sonic art was awesome and we're talking really on like I think the first time I played this game was when I was like seven or eight I remember going over to my friends house and he had the game on his PC and let me tell you we would play this game until the break at dawn okay not really we play for about an hour until one of us was like and didn't we'd ride our scooters until the break of dawn either way being able to control Sonic and friends in a 3d environment was really exciting I grew up with the third and fourth generation of consoles so being able to play any sort of game in a 3d world was always a privilege I also remember specifically being impressed of all the different characters you had access to this is both a strength and a weakness as we get into later but as a kid seeing so many different characters that all played extremely different it was really interesting this wasn't like Mario Kart we're picking a character we'll just meant the difference between speed and acceleration in Sonic are there are 10 characters including Super Sonic and they all have their own different traits for example as tails you go fly for a short time Robotnik can shoot missiles out leading players and Amy is bad alright fine let's go over all of them in detail first of all I should mention there's a pseudo tier system in play here what I mean by that is that the 10 characters are split into two different group the first group which we'll just call beats here consisting of Sonic Tails knuckles Eggman and Amy in a second-tier eight here metal sonic metal knuckles tails doll egg Robo and super sonic if you were to choose tails for example you would be put up against all the characters in the beats here likewise if you were to choose metal sonic you would be put up against all the characters in the eight here that is unless you haven't unlocked everyone in which case will be a mess of characters from both tiers and that makes a whole lot of sense right I'm playing as metal sonic racing against Sonic and super sonic someone though Sonic is the fastest of all the starting characters and you think you mean all-around character but he's actually one of the hardest to control in the game tell us is a bit slower but also better for a first time player for that very reason he's easier to maneuver and can even fly for a short while knuckles is just as maneuverable as tails and has the signature glide amy is pretty slow but she is one of the only three characters that will indefinitely float over water she also has a speed boost that will greatly increase her top speed for a small amount of time at the cost of reduced steering Robotnik might actually be worse than aiming he's just about a slow and won't fall in water much like Amy but instead of a speed boost ability he can shoot a missile at the cost of 10 rings which sounds like a pretty cool ability but in practice it might be the worst projectile attack I've ever seen in a video game not only do the missiles rarely hit their mark but they're practically useless look at that I hit Knuckles square in the ass at point-blank range and all that happens as it gets a little startled it pretty much exclusively acts as a button you press if you feel like having 10 less rings for whatever reason in the 8 here we have metal sonic who's not only faster than the real sonic but he can even skip across water if you keep jumping upon landing tails doll who's not only responsible for a bazillion creepypastas but can it definitely float over water it has a float ability opposed to a standard jump metal knuckles who's not only fast but can water skip just like Metal Sonic and still retains the original knuckles glide a grow bow who's probably the worst character in the game he's not that fast he can't jump he won't say above water like Eggman does and somehow his gun is even worse than a man's missiles whereas I managed to secure a few hits on Robotnik I shot countless times as a grow boat over multiple races and Olli managed to hit a character once so yeah don't pick a grow boat and finally there's Super Sonic who is straight-up broken once you unlock him don't expect to win any races if you're up against him he can run on water he has insane acceleration he has a triple jump and he's stupidly faster boo in fact he's so fast the replay cab can barely keep up of him I feel this might be as good of a transition as any the start talking about what I think about the game today I still think the game is fun to play but it's no secret sonic car has some severe shortcomings first of which these characters are stupidly unbalanced in fact the character roster in Sonic R is so unbalanced it makes Meta Knight from brawl look like a reasonable character if you play a two-player game of someone who's even halfway competent in video games you will never win against Super Sonic if you choose Amy Robotnik or a crow Bo just the fact that they had to split these characters up into their own separate ear lists should have been an early indicator that this this is not okay I think Super Sonic is a cool little bonus for collecting all the Chaos Emeralds but the fact that the game would humorously pick you up against him we decide to choose any of the 80 characters and expect you to somehow win is laughable like for real if Sonic R had an official tier list it probably looks something like this the imbalance nature the roster makes the game enjoyable enough when you're playing on your own but not at all viable as a remotely fair racing game either way ten characters Ulf unique play cells is a huge perk the total stage count of five on the other hand is not and yes you heard that correct Sonic R is a mascot racer with only five tracks to their credit with the exception of radiant emerald the tracks presented here of a fair level complexity multiple routes shortcuts there's a lot going on here maybe a little too much in fact if there's one thing even more imbalance in the characters it's the track routes themselves when it comes to multiple routes in a racing game it's expected both will have their pros and cons but in general they will take a similar amount of time and maneuver this however is not the case of Sonic R this is showcase as early as the very first level resort island here's the top-down render of it just look at this why the hell would you take this narrow winding path when you're inevitably gonna get stuck on the walls when you could just effort Lee Jeung to the left and simply run forward you can choose to take this short path right here or take the longer way all the way around the mountain and what the is this why the hell would you ever choose a detour all the way out there when the first turn is right here Sonic R is brutally unforgiving to newcomers that simply want to race it wasn't all for naught though there is a very specific reason the courses are designed this way and Sonic R is most unique in defining feature every level is riddled with collectables scattered and sometimes easy but most the time obscure locations it excuses the weird layouts in the context of a single-player experience but as a racer which Sonic R is after all the team's priorities were questionable to say the least it was likely a decision of Sonic Team and not travelers tales if I had a guess nevertheless here's not worse all stages contain emeralds and five gold tokens that is all about radiant emerald which contains neither if you can manage collect all five tokens during a race and place third or higher you will then be put up against one of the unlockable racers if you can manage to beat said racer you will unlock them as for the emeralds they will generally be harder to find the tokens and you will only secure them if you could place first otherwise once you collect all seven emeralds throughout the stages you will unlock the game braking mess himself supersonic if you choose to unlock him first before unlocking the other characters to the tokens the process of collecting the tokens and being the respective unlockable becomes a total cakewalk because as previously established no one really stands a chance against Super Sonic the method of unlocking the characters I think is generally fun it only takes about half an hour to unlock at all but this moreso than anything else is where the enjoyment of Sonic R is derived from much to Sonic cars own benefit or detriment depending on how you look at it the entirety of the game is seemingly designed around the task of unlocking everything this is good because as mentioned trying to unlock all these characters and messing around if what you've unlocked is a lot of fun conversely this is also a bad thing because as a racing game many of Sonic cars flaws come from this design philosophy going off the beaten path to deposit 50 rings to a door so you collect an emerald that pops out of a submarine hey what the hell did I just say is a really neat way to hide a collectible for sure but once you have collected that emerald there is no logical reason to go out here and blow 50 rings on a door that isn't even blocking anything or going back to resort island you would think this 50 ring door would provide a nice shortcut to players who managed to collect 50 rings but in reality despite this route being off the main path and requiring rings it takes longer they go this way the reason this is even here is to hide an emerald I don't mind they're being collectable scarifier out the levels and in convenient locations in fact I think it's a novel concept but when you decide to design the entire track around these collectibles is when the problem arises I would say a whopping 70 percent of the track only exists because the inclusion of the collectibles when it really should have been the other way around making a good level that makes sense as a racetrack should have been the priority only once the layout was finalized should the collectibles should have been considered if you're just trying to win a race so much of the track goes unused because it just isn't practical when playing a racing game if you're trying to figure out what routes are waste of time and which ones you should genuinely take I think there's an inherent problem with the track design because there should never be a route purely designed to waste your time every route should have its pros and cons generally that means the easier routes being longer and the more difficult one taking less time cleaning up these stages would also help with a mini-map I mean look at this mess how is this supposed to help anyone out some of these routes don't even make sense from a minimap perspective like what the hell is this route right here the inferred route you're gonna take if you're skipping across the water for fuck's sake that shouldn't be a part of the mini-map it's like taking a mario kart mini map and drawing an additional line anytime you could theoretically use a mushroom the cuts of the grass Jesus Christ I was quite the tangent I went on I almost forgot to talk about the arguably most controversial part of Sonic art the music [Music] composed by Richard Jackson sung by British singer Teresa Jane Davis the music and sauna car has been a point of debate ever since as a release some people loved it well others questioned what this sort of music is doing in a Sonic game a lot of the contention is directed at the vocals needless to say they're pretty silly and I don't think many people would question the compositions themselves if it wasn't for their inclusion what do I think well first of all they could be turned off in the options menu so I don't think it's worth getting worked up over but you know what prepare your keyboards because they actually kind of love the soundtrack to Sonic / it's insanely catchy doesn't really belong probably not but after playing the game of them I couldn't imagine racing through these tracks while listening to anything else these songs are just great so we've talked about the characteristic courses and music and now I want to round this video off of how sonic art could be improved is Sega for whatever reason takes another stab at it without further ado here's a list of changes I believe would make sonic our a better game change number one balance out the abilities of the characters every character should have a more or less equal shot at winning a race at the very least there especially shouldn't be such a gap between them that even the game separates them into two groups when you play Robotnik and a group whose weapon should have a much greater impact alongside greater accuracy Amy especially since she cannot jump to be faster and should turn tighter metal Sonic's ability is skip across water is already pretty Opie as it is so he should be made much slower for lower jump same of metal knuckles slightly slower and difficult to control as for a grow Bo if he has legs then I see no reason why he shouldn't have a job change number two rework the controls I think one of the biggest issues of how these characters control is how slowly they turn which is why they've often been compared to tanks by many people with the exception of racers have higher than average speed controls should have a much tighter feel of sharper cornering because parts like these hairpin turns or railroads are unbelievably clumsy of the current controls of course the less than adequate controls might not even be as noticeable was it not for the change number three track designs the tracks do not have all complement the controls of the racers considering how loosely Sonic and Friends control tracks should be made much wider of softer turns and if there should be a hairpin turn there should be plenty of anticipation leading up to it it shouldn't be preceded by two more hairpins I know he spent a while talking about the designs themselves having a surplus of inefficient routes but even those would be forgivable if they were easier to navigate and finally change number four there needs to be more than five tracks I understand sonic car was made under a strict time frame and how much travelers tales were able to manage is commendable right but I think I thought of a sneaky trick they could have used to expand the five stages into at least nine so please excuse the schottische Photoshop sigh did I just made these to explain my angle so as discussed the stages are probably a little too dense and complicated for their own good they're taxing on newcomers and make the mini-map look like some kind of three-year-olds connect the dots drawing so to minimize work what if we took a single track and turned it into two separate tracks as you see here I've taken a render of resort island and have edited the areas into two alterations this first edit removes the beach to left that traverses this type pathway Mickey a more viable alongside making the intended route more understood then I've removed the collection of islands you logically wouldn't travel to in a standard race event in this last Junction where one route is clearly shorter than the other I've removed the longer route and only left the shorter one for the second edit the type a story has been completely removed and in its place is now all alternatively I've left the beach making the route that you must take them up here I've also turned that nonsensical route you wanted normally take into the only route finally back at this last Junction the longer route is now the path you must take as some final additions you may have noticed I made one and it looked like it was taking place during night and the other during sunset well and the options menu for Sonic are on PC there are actually weather settings the time of day will change in addition to there being either rain or snow instead of having s be a toggle in the options having the two alterations having different lighting information would go a long way making the two edits feel different as a final touch Sonic R has a reverse boat in the time trial options having slight differences in the layout different lighting and having to traverse the level in the opposite direction would all add together to great effect and sincerely make these simple edits feel like two completely different stages and it wouldn't even take that much work to boo I'm sure most people would catch on but having alternate versions of resort island radical City regular ruins and reactor factory to make for a total of nine sages would look a hell of a lot better than the current five that they have even if they were similar as an extra bonus with that number of sages you could turn the grand prix mode into an actual Grand Prix Sonic Riders had something similar where they had two Grand Prix's one of five tracks and the other of those same five tracks but heavily altered why not do that with Sonic R haven't Grand Prix for each set alterations once a complete bow you could unlock rightie emerald as a special bonus track and that's it oh man is this proof that subconsciously I've been dying to talk about Sonic art because holy this is one of the longest videos I've ever made I really enjoyed this game honestly I know he spent a good deal of this video ragging on it but it genuinely comes from a place of admiration I I love this game growing up in while I have solutely recognized as many faults as an adult I still have a soft spot for it I totally understand why receives a terrible river has but at the same time i think sonic r is a lot more fascinating than it is bad is it a mess I mean sure but that doesn't change the fact that anytime I pick up this game no matter how old I get I always have a fantastic time for something so bad sonic r is one of the most charming games of all time and you could bet your ass I'll be playing it again sometime in the near future [Music] hey thank you so much for watching I'd like to give a shout out to some of my patrons such as the basement dweller Amanda Guth roaming batter cue Victoria Mars Kasia nadir in a bikini - thank you all so much and if you're a patreon alpha version 1.1 of my games should be out by his house video uploads so make sure to check that out if you like for everyone else there will be links to my Twitter patreon and Facebook down below again thank you all for watching and until next time have a good one [Music]

Channel: SilokHawk

Views: 125,781

Rating: 4.9046283 out of 5

Keywords: sonic r, silokhawk, review, analysis, gamehut

Id: -vew6LJPtKY

Length: 20min 58sec (1258 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 29 2019