Game Apologist - Sonic Forces

hello there I'm Nick and this is the game apologist where we look for the good in bad games 2017 has been one of the greatest years in gaming history and these are flourishing spectacular new IPs reminded us we don't know is in sequels but we also have sequels reminding us that the best can get even better a fantastic new system was released skyrim still here and we've seen the return of some of the most beloved platformers in gaming history 2017 has been so good to us that even Sonic the Hedgehog has been welcomed back with open arms and then sonic forces came out he just had to screw this up didn't you come uninitiated sonic forces is the latest in the long-running series this time bringing a darker tone as we see the world taken over by dr. egg just let us call him Robotnik for the love of God man and it's up to Sonic Sonic and not Sonic to take it back gameplay is split between these three or sometimes two characters at the same time and also features the return of the popular boost formula as well as a handful of momentum paced classic platforming with classic Sonic the game also features the third character and avatar you can create yourself because remember when this game was coming out we all thought it was buzzy ha ha how ridiculous that would have been who who would want bubsy back but see I feel it now the avatar plays a lot like modern song with levels split between running corridors and 2d platformer but it swaps out the speed boost for a grappling hook that lets you do whatever spider can as well as a wisp and gun that mows down enemies in your favorite flavor of death red orange green blue intern squad so they have something for every kind of fan in this one game the boost gameplay has been gone long enough for it to be missed classic sonic is here for us old-school fans and deviantART gets to throw all their cringy creations into this new avatar character even the often overlooked fans of the early 2000 days get some love with the return of the darker more serious storytelling in theory this sounds like all signs are pointing to the perfect package for Sonic painting but if you've been a Sonic fan as long as I have you come to see these as warning signs look at all the different ways they can screw this up [Music] as quick as critics word to praise sonic mania they were just as quick to jump back on the hate train with the release of forces but to be completely fair not everybody says this is a totally terrible game it's divisive certainly but I feel a lot more people are more a about this game than anything else it's Sonic Team what were we really expecting this was never gonna be a masterpiece in casual Sonic fans seem to like it okay even Jim Sonic Colors is a 4.0 sterling likes this game this is that man I like this guy's videos but I just can't pay his tastes at all truth be told it might just be getting a harder time coming off the heels of Sonic mania forces feels like a rush sequel to Sonic Generations and if this came out a year after that game I feel angry fans would be much more forgiving on this title but this came out six years later even though it feels like a rush sequel that came out six months later despite that cap in time this game is worse on almost every single level hey Sonic fans we heard you were getting sick and tired of seeing Green Hill Zone in each and every game we've been releasing so we're gonna put it in this game in three separate levels great not that it's gonna play anywhere near as well as literally any other version of his same stinking level you've seen for 25 years and if you were tired of Green Hill don't worry you can also be tired of chemical plant zone and the death eggs back for some reason but maybe I'm exaggerating the overuse of Green Hill I mean these levels are so short they almost combined to a normal length level in any other video game yup in a game series that literally rewards you for being able to blast through levels in under a minute fans are complaining about these levels being too short see the thing about being able to speed through older Sonic levels is the fact that you needed to really understand the game's mechanics and level layout to make the best time wasn't likely you'd roll through any of these stages that quickly on your first run-through in sonic forces not only is have a very likely possibility on your first playthrough that starts you off recommending hardmode even with that you're probably going in that level with an s-rank there's little to no effort required for a solid chunk of this game and look maybe this is weird and just me but a game starting me off in hard mode is telling me that it's just bunk from the beginning hard mode is usually they seize four replayability returning players who've mastered the mechanics of the game and want a little bit more Challenge when your hard modes the standard it's not hard what's even the point of having a normal mode at all so six years after the beloved generations we get levels that are bland short and reuse assets from those older games I mean there are new sections here but like the infamous Sonic 4 while they show you some really cool stuff going on in the background they don't really equalize it in the main course even if this game had fantastic level design getting through them would still be a chore that's the only real challenge in this game is fighting these god-awful physics I've said it before and I will say it again I still feel they nailed Sonic's movement in the original sonic adventure game super hard get a nice sense of momentum and had this big floaty jump that gave you complete control over where he landed game isn't perfect but I thought the controls were a fantastic transition from the 2d mechanics but all these years later in this game when you make these characters jump it feels a lot like throwing a large rock in hoping you know where it's gonna land I've died more often from missing jumps on the platforms than any other way in this game yeah it's hard to get on the platforms in this platforming game and it doesn't help that you have to keep swapping play cells from level to level plays modern sonic all you really need to do is boost to beat the level switch to the avatar and it feels about the same but you can't boost instead you have these grapple points that are sometimes automated and then you have this gun that just never runs out of ammo I don't even know why it's here then you all see a levels where you play a Sonic and the avatar at the same time where you can combine all the abilities which makes me wonder why didn't you just have one character and within these levels you'll once again be swapping between these running order sections in these clunky 2d sections which I'll be real with you guys I've never liked the shift is jarring the game monkey and it's even worse in sonic forces as precision has been thrown right out the window it just makes me wish I was playing the classic games Oh but lucky me this old-school fan has to shut his stupid mouth because classic sonic is back for a handful of levels and now he plays like trash so if the 2d sections within the other levels weren't jarring enough you gonna have to completely switch a play styles every now and again with this terrible emulation of old-school Sonic it pretends to have momentum but it clearly doesn't it's trying to be the classic games without ever really understanding what made them so great which isn't a good look when you released two months after one of the greatest games in the series and I'm sorry guys it is fair to make those comparisons not only through this release two months after mania but this is a continuation of manias story the sonic and mania is the same sonic in the sonic forces you remember how I said mania felt like a alternate dimension where the 90s never ended the Saturn got a good Sonic game and his franchise didn't become a joke to all of the gaming world well it's like that Sonic popped over to the real world and saw what actually happened to the series behold Sonic behold your legacy and we've [Applause] become sane this but this game would have been better without classic Sonic I mean even really doesn't even anything to the story not that it's a story worth telling anyway I mean yeah the story's simple enough doctor Amla is taking over the world go get it back I could land fast the sorry attempt at a darker tone why now how ridiculous it is have all these rainbow animals talk about coping with death and survival because really it is quite silly but my actual problem is the missed potential so I'm gonna have to go full Sonic dork here so bear with me bear with me cos you can actually be a bear oh my god this is not the first time we've seen Eggman take over the world in this franchise way back in the day how some American kids were treated to the Sonic Saturday morning cartoon and this show Robotnik had taken over Mobius the name of Sonic's planet a massive amount of the world had been turned into a dreary industrial waste the citizens having been roboticized which is a method of exactly what it sounds like turning organic beans in a robotic slaves a terrifying twist on using animals as a power source from the games in a clever way to avoid mass genocide of fuzzy animal people in a kids show sonic was part of a ragtag group called the freedom fighters the last line of defense between Robotnik and his complete rule over Mobius the show ended after only a couple of seasons but would spiritually continue on in the archie sonic comic series which lasted all the way up until late 2016 wasn't great at first but over the years thanks to clever writing they managed to bring in a brilliant mix of the best ideas from the American side of Sonic's history with the more Game Center designs from Japan so now at the end of 2017 the longest-running comic based in video games is finally dead as well as the fantastic characters and plots created for American fans but what are the games incorporated from such a storied history chili dogs and that sounds like a terrible choice of food to pick up right after a run but I'm sure his metabolism can handle it are you serious on team are you pretty serious you can reference this this and this but you guys couldn't bring nothing nothing from the show we're comics this would have been so easy you have all the rights to all these characters and you couldn't even give a name to a stupid world that can oh my god this level select is a mess I'm sorry guys I know I'm being super biased here but this game's world is so bland it has no identity literally none didn't have the guts to call it earth let alone Mobius and all these generic placeholder soldiers could have easily been the freedom fighters we are told the stakes are high we're told things are dying and I would probably care if this was the third act to a much longer game leading up to this point or like the third game in the trilogy even with everything on fire Eggman never actually feels like a threat you just jump from one thing till the next until the game on ceremoniously ends there's even a point where infinite sends our heroes into some negative dimension and then we're like two minutes later there's no lasting effect to any of this nonsense yes I know kids game but if you're gonna take a darker tone then own it the cartoon and comics weren't perfect but the dark tone made sense for the narrative things were dreary but Sonic was like this bright blue beacon of hope who stood out amongst this drab world even the other freedom fighters had muted colors making our stand out that much more and Robotnik was terrifying he had the presence of Darth Vader when he walked onto the scene in this game Eggman is as cartoonishly silly as ever look I know this seems silly I'm not saying I need to make a bunch of callbacks to old cartoons my point is you can tell an engaging narrative that makes you care about characters even if they're walking talking animal people and I wouldn't care about the story so much if it wasn't in my freakin face the entire way through if they're gonna put so much focus on the stupid story then make me care about the world and its inhabitants two out of your three playable characters don't even speak I've always thought the silent protagonists in a world full of chatterboxes was always really weird but at least you could stay consistent and yes I know why classic sonic where the avatar don't speak I'm just saying this mixture makes no sense there's no focus is this an end-of-the-world narrative that cultivates in an ultimate showdown between two enemies is this a continuation of Sonic mania focusing on the power of the Phantom ruby across all worlds and how it needs to be stopped or maybe it's a tale of fearful little nobody who rises above all the odds to fight alongside the greats and save the world well yeah it tries to tell those stories but it tries to tell them all that once and it stumbles but this had been organized the three separate campaigns in the style of Sonic Adventure then I think you'd have a much more compelling narrative or in this case narratives and you'd have time to get a handle on the different playstyles of physics instead of having to jump to another character every two minutes and then maybe having two new characters wouldn't be so jarring but as it stands now I don't even care about the character who never shuts up modern sonic bloggers on and on even if the world falling apart around him and I don't really think he cares let me show you what I mean at the start of the game Sonic is captured and tortured for six months all of his friends think he's dead yes I am serious I'm not kidding so what kind of sad broken stayed his hand when we finally see him again for the first exactly the same he's exactly the same not even a quill out of place there's a new kids game come on man in the cartoon he was allowed to cry he was allowed to react he was allowed to fee he'll hear he's just a toy with a button you press to spiel one-liners ah and going into this game I was genuinely interested to see how we would interact with all these other characters all of his old enemies get their own trailer chaos is back shadow switched sides metal song it's always a pleasure to see and then zip then zebra - who cares this guy's back - oh and then turns out they're all just copies spoilers who cares who cares they're not even here and you only fight two of them chaos is back I wanna fight chaos why not fight zebras a clip so what do i do do I just jump what is happening how does this stupid bee work this game never shuts up at any other point with stupid hints it up and not just why can you tell and the new guy infinite seems pretty cool but what is he is he a creation in the lab a faceless jerk who throws a temper tantrum because the other emo kid called him a name because it's not exactly clear on that oh but they tell you and the stupid comic book they released on the owner I don't care I don't care for real as stupid as this reasoning is for hating shadow at least there's something of a rivalry there but in this game you only fight against infinite with Sonic or the avatar which I guess has a history because he was scared what now who cares who cares you just beat him and he leaves who cares spoilers shut up and speaking of this create a character crap it's don't lie it's dumb I don't like avatar characters I don't like them yeah it's good it feels like pandering fanfiction this cringe-inducing nonsense you're just both buddies hanging out with my best pal sonic ball the world's falling apart Sanne doesn't even know your stupid name you stupid idiots stupid face everything this game tries to do we've seen them way better within its own franchise I've seen better stories told of these characters in every other medium if these games are gonna make me sit through a tale then hire somebody who knows how to tell a decent story you've had the longest-running comic series for any game character that broke Guinness World Records there have been countless TV shows and there's a fairly decent one running right now it's been long enough Sonic games can do better than this and story aside the gameplay what happened here the the same people who made Sonic Colors and Sonic Generations they advertise that before we saw anything else in this game and it doesn't help that this game released six years after the last game featuring this game play two months after a Sonic game that costs a fraction of what this one did and also fair way better with fans and critics and only a week after Mario's glorious return to 3d I said it in my first video that I was worried they would screw something up before the release of this game and here we are and it also arrived on Super Mario World for like three minutes that's one of the greatest games ever made I did that for you Sonic I said Mario make dinosaurs lame and what does Nintendo do Sega what are you guys doing over there I just I just want these games to be good Sega this is one of the last things keeping you relevant figure it out yeah okay sorry normally this would be much easier to shrug off the bad of this was some random bargain bin game that I picked up for a dollar or something that's been notoriously crappy for years but that's just not the case here this is a relatively new release in a series that's been given so many second chances to write the ship a series I've been a fan of my whole life so I'm gonna be a little bit harsh when they screw things up and the way I make it sound this sounds like the worst game in the world but that's that's just not the case I'm just frustrated I've seen these guys do better and I expect better but let's say you're not some grown man complaining on YouTube about a furry blue boy let's say you don't really care when this came out compared to other games in the franchise or maybe you're just a parent trying to find something cheap for their kids maybe you just want to know how this game stands on its own is the game as broken as I make it out to be while the physics aren't perfect while the story is bland and all over the place it's still fine it's absolutely playable now granted if you're trying to get this for your kid and you're expecting a Sonic game in the style you grew up with you're probably gonna run into a situation where you're asking yourself did that little red rat boy just say Sonic's been murdered but hey look they pulled this something like three other times before and it's gotten a lot weirder than this so I'm sure you're not starting your kids too much jokes aside I do feel this particular sonic game is gonna resonate just fine with kids yes the levels are annoyingly short but I do feel the length of them will go down better with a younger audience and they do get a little lengthier in later portions of the game but for the most part these levels usually focus on one particular gimmick so if you like the waterslide well you can just jump right to that and speaking of the levels there are some cool ideas going on here you can tell a lot of work went into the status of each area the white cityscapes looks slick a Junko casino is a nice mix of old tropes and I love how it looks and while chemical plant in Green Hill have overstayed their welcome z' seen old sonic stages in an almost post-apocalyptic setting is actually kind of cool I mean that's the closest I got to caring about this world and its destruction they offered some new looks at old favorites flying over frosty refineries and chemical plant fault like the Gravatt environments straight out of the Fallout series and gripes aside I have to omit this old fan like scene death egg again they basically recreated the death eggs own from Sonic and Knuckles which was an absolute treat from it yeah look classic Sonic doesn't play as well as he does in mania generations I still always enjoy seeing that little pot-bellied version no matter how out of place he is as for the other characters modern sonic isn't quite as fun as I remember but if you like the boost gameplay this does the job fun and the avatar well like I said I don't like custom characters in narratives I'd rather see a character growth have an arc something whatever for me the avatar was the low point of the game didn't like the stages and I don't like this cringe inducing power friendship crap but I also understand why people absolutely adore this character look when it comes right down to it the avatar was a brilliant play the sonic fanbase is fairly notorious for their fan made characters and it only makes sense to capitalize on that and as Jim how do you like this more than colors sterling pointed out in a world full of loot crate's and microtransactions sonic forces practically drowns you in customizations for your character even after beating the game and hopping back into captures more footage for this video I was still being thrown gloves shoes and body suits like a party stores going out of business the appeal of the customizable character is well the customization and while I feel there was more they could do in terms of options this is certainly a healthy start even I had a lot of fun mixing and matching clothes and hey even if you've never wanted would be like to be best friends asana call your bird people you could just do what I did and design them off of real pets that's what I did because ghosty ghost is the ghosts emotions hi baby boy you want to run around the song - Hedgehog no cuz that'd be really weird hey that's still an option the rest of the cast is a little more melodramatic than normal but hey it was still nice to see them remote or be here at all really Sonic's cast has an endowed played pretty hard for the past decade and I can't really blame him Sega for that but it feels like they're slowly being reintroduced to the series tails actually gets a story about coping with loss and connecting with classic sonic Knuckles gets to step up into a leadership role which is a nice change of pace from but the others get some screen time but obviously the main attraction is the three playable character in terms of these three I've got to admit it's been fascinating checking out other reviews because nobody seems consistent on which one is their favorite some feel classic Sonic is the worst while I've heard others praising him proving the best part of the game and same with the Avatar character some feel it gets way too much attention and to others I'm sure it's the entire reason they bought this game modern sonic seems to coast by without too many people feeling one way or the other about them but what about me I've moaned and complained and played apologist for all three of them so which do I feel is the best playable character in the game well to me there's only one obvious answer seriously no seriously look I've seen all the other jokes I get it I know how annoyingly close this game was to being Shadow the Hedgehog - but how can humston come out and say it I think this would have been way better if this was the sequel The Shadow the Hedgehog I like this character alright I don't care if you feel he's the bringer of the sonic apocalypse but I think he looks cool I think his stereotypical stoic anime rival attitude is nice change of pace compared to the rest of the happy-go-lucky animal people I like shadow and this game would have been much better if they kept the focus on him so this game allows to grab some free dlc in the form of a prequel story called episode shadow these are three levels where you get a play the edgehog and maybe it's because I'd already beaten the game at this point and had a better handle on these Blanca physics but I felt that these three levels are some of the best design in this entire game they were still short but they provided a little more variety and challenge to the point where I didn't really notice they also show the origin of infinite here kind of I mean it's lame but like I said up front it at least establishes some warmth connection between characters here in the main game all these relationships are so disjointed Sonic becomes best friends with your stupid avatar while his actual best friend thinks he's dead for half of the game so he connects with an alternate version of Sonic who is completely disconnected with everybody else in this world and none of them have a connection to this new villain and like I complained about earlier none of them have any established connections to all these fake villains but here in shadow story is the one place they establish any kind of beef and it would've loved to see that expanded on focusing on shadow would have provided well focus and since he's not Sonic you could have slowly introduced new mechanics through the game that Sonic would never been allowed to use such as the whisk gun which feels similar to that other shadow game without it being a real guns Sega seriously what were you thinking I mean come on look even the title of the game would have been better if they called it shadow forces it's a tad generic but you have to admit my point stands even the logos in his color scheme come on I know this is Songz 25th anniversary and the name sells but we already had mania to celebrate the legacy how cool would this game have been if it's scaled back all this extra nonsense and focused on shadow taking back the world from his new rival while Sonic was out of commission that sounds kind of cool this game could have been shadows Redemption also seriously where was he for those six months oh well that's just my take maybe this DLC was testing the waters to see if the public would take to it well I for one did and hey I'm also happy to report that the music's pretty great it doesn't always work for me I can do without vocals and most of these tracks and classic sonic stages just make me sad but when they nail it they nail it while infinite seems to be device among fans his theme certainly is I mean listen to the covers from this one song [Music] [Applause] and that's kind of how I feel about this game overall when they nail it they remind us why people fell in love with this kind of Sonic game it's a cinematic adrenaline-filled rollercoaster at the best of times and while it never flies completely off the rails it's definitely in need of a tuna look fellow Sonic nerds I'm a classic fan first and foremost and I was not happy with this game when I first finished it ultimately I'm still not very happy with it but that doesn't mean I want the 3d games get wiped off the face of the planet we can have good Sonic games regardless of which kind is your favorite and we can have good sonic stories told for cardless of the media you enjoy them in this game could have been should have been the great uniter for Sonic fans instead of a physical reminder of how disjointed it is and I get it people riding on this game too hard might mean that we don't get to see the boost formula again or maybe the classic games are all we get from now on in maybe you're not the biggest fan of those but like I've said I've seen these games do way better than this and they need to evolve they shouldn't be making something that's worse than a game that they created six years ago regardless of its classic or booster adventure I just want these games to be consistently good and giving them constant passes whenever they deliver subpar content is not gonna make that happen there are really cool ideas in this game and I hope they expand upon them but I'm back to being cautiously optimistic unless they do something truly amazing the next game from this team won't be a date one purchase from and for real we can all agree that having Super Sonic as paid DLC is complete garbage right I mean the social media team was making fun of loot crate's and they still pull crap like this I mean come on man's exact same animations from the last game well that's really all I have to say ultimately yeah I'd say this is a man game I didn't hate it but I wish I didn't spend 40 bucks on it especially since it's already on sale and clearly Sega knew they had a bit of a dud on their hands too they didn't even release preview copies yet as defensive as you want but this team clearly knew that they'd screwed up along the way but yeah that's for this Sonic fan I'll come back to it eventually and I'll have some fun with I don't just want to play classic Sonic games but until they give me something better I'm just gonna back in song mania save you now you you

Channel: Game Apologist

Views: 252,677

Rating: 4.8614135 out of 5

Keywords: Sonic Forces, Game Apologist, Shadow the Hedgehog, Ugandian Knuckles, Shadow Forces, Sega, videogames, game culture, Sonic fans, Tails, Chaos, Zebra, Metal Sonic, Freedom Fighters, SatAM, game review, the good in bad games, Sega Genesis, 2017, Shadow the Hedgehog 2, Deviantart, OC, orginal character, Avatar, Classic Sonic, Modern Sonic, Do you know de way, platformers, Mania vs Forces, is sonic forces bad

Id: HtdLUiDiZXs

Length: 25min 43sec (1543 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 13 2018