The Sonic Boost Era | Boosting to Win Can be Painful

[Music] if it's one thing that us true sonic the hedgehog fans can get behind it is the simple concept of dividing handfuls of these games into multiple eras sonic generations famously coined the classic adventure and modern eras as a fancy little bit of fan service to that game's benefit but come on now modern is a relative term 06 unleashed and colors were part of that era in generations and those games are all over 10 years old now it's time to move on with sonic frontiers completely shifting the expected gameplay style to this open world exploration idea and takashi azuka even stating that this will be quote that next step for the next 10 years i would assume that we would all move accordingly and start calling that modern now and i mean it's not to say that we won't see this older gameplay style ever show up again it's already in frontiers but i believe we can finally put a nice bow on what i'm just going to call the sonic boost era unleashed colors with ultimate generations and forces none of this is good vector that's why it's called war ah forces is a gift from 2008 to 2017 this style has been dominant for nearly 10 years and sonic fans have certainly been through a lot in those times now that's not to say those are the only sonic games that released during those times of course now we got sonic 4 lost world we got ryza lyric uh there's all the mario and sonic at the olympics games titles uh there's sonic athletics for japanese arcades i almost forgot about sonic athletics how foolish of me but i wanted to talk about the four main titles that all have a damn near identical primary gameplay loop and really analyze everything about them like literally everything i have played a lot of sonic over the last few months so i am very on edge please don't test me obviously if you have been following me for a while you already know that i have played these games a bunch before i've talked about them all separately in different videos over the years either in individual reviews or showcasing a ton of creative mods in the case of generations but until recently there hasn't really been a one-stop shop to experience this entire saga on a single console these titles on their original releases were spread across the ps3 and 360 then the wii with later more modern ports ps3 and 360 again but also on pc then finally ps4 xbone switch and again pc and sure you could always emulate unleashed and colors on pc to get an arguably better experience especially in the case of colors but nothing really compares to an official release you could very easily argue that an emulated colors does compare very favorably to the ultimate version but you get what i mean but even then man like at launch colors ultimate was an epic store exclusive and not available on steam so even there there's some shenanigans as for sonic unleashed well this is where things get a bit more interesting praise father phil spencer of xbox fame for he has done what was once thought to be impossible in late 2021 it was announced that xbox consoles would not only be getting their final batch of backward compatible games finally giving users spongebob truth or square thank god it's about time but also introducing an amazing new feature with fps boost on series x and s consoles to sonic and all-stars racing transformed sonic generations and yes sonic unleashed that oh oh my god that that means that for the first time ever we actually have an official 60 fps version of unleashed on console i mean we've already had racing transformed in generations on pc so 60fps for those games isn't really groundbreaking but sonic world adventure on the other hand that also reminds me like the console version of generations had built in 3d so yeah i don't know maybe you can access that in 60 fps too that probably looks uh interesting this doesn't really count as an official re-release at the time of this video you can't get this on playstation or steam let alone nintendo you're never gonna see it there but still this is so damn cool people have been wanting this for years and say what you will about unleashed on a gameplay front but on a technical level that game was way ahead of its time that game chugs boy oh man get into that jungle stage and it's amazing your console doesn't explode trying to get through it but look a penguin so yeah xbox series x and s is currently the place to experience everything this boost era has to offer in an official capacity like i said before if you want to be stingy you are probably better off emulating colors with dolphin you could even emulate unleashed with a ps3 or 360 emulator there's always the unleashed project for generations you can even load up generation stages in forces if you're feeling particularly freaky that day but even as a big fan of those pc options it is so beneficial having the original pure experience readily available although for whatever reason uh this one spot and chemical plant in particular is busted in 60 fps it just doesn't work you you grab onto this and you're going to die every single time and i don't think they're going to patch that anytime soon and it only works if you go back into the menu and disable fps boost which is very very strange uh but other than that it's great there is also this one charming cutscene that didn't have audio for some reason uh and the game also froze randomly at this part that was that was fun uh but okay really other than that we're fine and of course not to belittle the side versions of these games too you got sonic unleashed on the wii and ps2 colors on the ds generations on the 3ds forces on the switch in a combo pack with super monkey ball banana blitz hd sonic unleashed on mobile if you're feeling the freakiest you've ever felt in your life you could play it there you've always had other options but all of the main versions of these games nice and compact into one box sign me up sadly yes sonico6 never got the backward compatibility treatment and that program is dead now uh so no sweet series x upscaling for that game oh what a shame i wish man so you may have pieced this together at this point but to go back to the question of just what did i mean when i said literally everything about these games i mean what you thought this is just going to be another one of those oh it's a youtuber bashing a modern sonic game video no absolutely not look i got all of the achievements in all four games [Music] i am so tired it is so easy to be reactionary and angry with these sonic games but like i said before i wanted to really dissect these adventures for everything they're worth not just get to the credits and make a 20 minute review and i figured going for the achievements was the simplest way of doing so retroactively that was totally a mistake but let's continue it also seems like nowadays the narratives for these games have changed so much i guess people love unleashed and dislike colors now that's the exact opposite of what people were saying back when these games first launched where did do people come from and don't even get me started with the forces defenders you guys are gonna be fighting an uphill battle for the rest of your life as for the achievement thing yeah i could have done the same thing with trophies on playstation i actually do have the platinum in generations was the first platinum i ever got but that would mean i'd have to play more unleashed on ps3 and yeah i'm convinced that's part of the reason why i didn't like the game at the time of the first video i don't know man it is kind of hard to keep up with i figured it would be best being open and taking it all at face value by today's standards set by me oh uh sorry ignore the whole pain and suffering thing that was just to stir the pot on twitter i couldn't help myself so uh once i realized i was gonna be doing this video i told one uh some call me johnny about it i figured i can make sure that he keeps that a secret and uh when i did tell him that and this is 100 real he responded back with hahaha get great sonic colors ultimate pre-order bonus baby sonic keychain give me strength let's talk about all the highs and lows of the sonic boost era [Music] the music the soundtracks to all of these games are really good that's that's all i got just figured i should mention that now since it's not really going to come up throughout the rest of the video so uh yeah praise be to uh endless possibilities rooftop run every version of that song and the metal sonic remix and forces that's it's really good all right moving on [Music] the boost part the glue that really binds these four specific games together is the way the main sonic stages play out thanks to the fancy new hedgehog engine built for sonic unleashed and used many times for future products since whether it be in full 3d or a hefty amount of side scrolling 2d you can certainly go fast that's to be expected but once this little bar in the bottom of the screen fills up you can decide you're not going fast enough and activate a boost to blast through at supersonic speeds for some reason the hot thing to say against this style was oh it's just boost to win and that really couldn't be any further from the truth sonic has gone through so many different gameplay styles over the years and i'm not going to try and convince you that this is the best or anything like that but what made this a success was it being pretty easy to understand while also having a really high skill ceiling rewarding your memorization of the stage layouts learning what paths to take to shave off a few seconds of your time and your quick reflexes to incorporate all of sonic's new moves like the slide the side step the drift there is definitely a fair share of beginners traps things that hurt you because you didn't see them coming your first time through and any instance of precise platforming it's pretty obvious that this wasn't really built for that since it's really hard to be exact with your jumps but damn man if a really well optimized run of your favorite levels doesn't feel amazing being so focused on reacting to what's on screen with a quick split-second decision may not be the most user-friendly experience for a lot of people but in an effort to really give sonic a bit of a unique identity in the modern platforming world honestly i think this was perfect this is where unleashed and generations shine the most in my opinion both of these games feature a bunch of stages that do exactly what they need to with really well thought out level designs that seamlessly blend together the 3d and 2d stuff while sprinkling in a bunch of familiar sonic tropes like the loops the grind rails the strings of enemies to homing attack to i know some people take issue with the fact that there's 2d in these levels at all but considering that all of these stages are all about these constantly changing camera angles and attempting to place obstacles in a way that benefits said camera angles the side scrolling stuff kind of felt like a natural inclusion to me and not just a means to appeal to the old school fans apparently this whole side-scrolling idea was to appeal to the old school fans according to old interviews but i don't care i said what i said aesthetically too man all of these levels just pop the unleashed approach of these real world-inspired locations and generations melding popular stages from series past into one uniform style i would go as far as to say that this is the best sonic has ever looked and played for every daytime level in unleashed and all but planet wisp and generations this is pretty damn flawless sonic gameplay in my eyes and no this is not an invitation to argue about ideal sonic gameplay down in the comments it's just my opinion let's get through this like normal people empire city pool edge and rooftop run and unleashed speed highway chemical plant and rooftop run in generations these are some of my favorite stages in the entire franchise now on a more granular detail between both games there are some minor differences unleashed stages are gigantic some of these spaces that you boost through give you so much wiggle room and it's not like there's a million paths to choose from or anything like that you're just free to move about as you please and not feel like you're restricted to a straight line it does help that when you're moving quickly i do feel like you have a pretty good control of sonic's movements when you're going really fast not so much when you're slowing down but when you're doing the primary boosting stuff it feels good and like i said at the top of the video man with fps boost running through the forest here or running over the water with all these falling buildings oh it is smooth as butter on these consoles it took 10 plus years but unleashed finally hit its true potential it's amazing i will say though i am not a big fan of the quick time event pads that pop up from time to time if you miss one you're probably dead but this is mostly because of me growing up as a nintendo and playstation guy so when the game tells me i have two seconds to press the x button yeah i'm gonna need a little bit more time generations by comparison is definitely a lot more focused offering tighter level designs and obstacles that rely more on reflexes rather than oh i can see them from far away better plan my moves trying to immerse you in these natural looking environments is not what generations is going for but hey both of these games still do a really good job of what they're setting out to accomplish as an evolution of the boost mechanic that we saw on sonic rush or even just as a more advanced take of what we got in secret rings it was genuinely surprising at the time to see a modern gameplay style that really felt like a true next-gen jump coming off of the adventure games and nowadays they are still a blast as for colors and forces well things are a bit different there as well the main gameplay is still the same you go really fast and you have a boost option but in the instance of colors things are incredibly limited and restricted to side scrolling presumably due to the limitations of the wii that it was originally built for there was no way we were going to get the full scope of unleashed on this console without shrinking the hell out of it for a dedicated version and as for forces the level design is boring and terrible but we'll get to that we'll get to that a shocking amount of people get way too upset when you call colors a 3d sonic game it may not be as open and filled with options as the rest of the games but i still think the game does a great job establishing these really bright and colorful areas with unique gimmicks and fun platforming it is a lot of side scrolling that's true but i i don't know i just wanted a fun game i didn't really care about how that happened the problem the way i see it comes from how the stages are laid out in unleashed and generations each world has primarily one level with some side missions if you fancy in colors on the other hand each zone has six acts and while one or two of them can justifiably be considered the main one with the longest and most varied designs of the bunch a lot of the other ones are just these slightly modified rehashes of those main stages and in a much shorter capacity when you start doing this incredibly basic platforming on boring gray boxes in a stage that takes like 30 seconds to finish then yeah i could see why some people are upset for the record i don't hate this i totally understand but i still enjoyed my time it's definitely not ideal though especially considering that even still a full playthrough only takes about three hours i think back in 2010 uh we were just happy to have a sonic game that we could play from start to finish and it didn't explode but hey that's where the wisps come in while the rest of the games in this era leave the sonic gameplay mostly untouched and fill the rest of the gameplay time with other styles colors is the only game of the bunch whose main gimmick is incorporated into sonic's moveset and i love these little aliens man we now have this sort of outer space equivalent to all of those woodland animals that we were saving so many years ago it made total sense and now these are the source of your new powers this is how you get the boost now instead of rings and then there's the different colors that give a special contextual abilities like a laser beam a drill a slow floating thing a cube that plays like what sounds like the seinfeld theme i think these are a genius inclusion because not only do they make sense in the world that colors takes place in but mechanically they help compensate for the otherwise limited design of the gameplay again despite coming from unleashed the stages are nowhere near as open but learning how to utilize the wisp powers to figure out how to best tackle these acts totally makes up for that and that is why planet wisp in generations is so lame they were trying to take the design philosophy of generations and shoehorn in just a single wisp with the rocket one and a level that's just now needlessly longer than the rest when it could have been the best stage in the game the beginning parts of it when you're running through the grass area it's amazing and then you get to the factory end it's a it's a really sour note to end that game on they definitely fit the best in colors and also i'll be totally transparent i'm a bit more willing to forgive colors just because we're bombarded with these creative level themes thanks to this whole outer space amusement park idea i love that and these simple attempts to get all of this across on a console that was basically just two game cubes duct taped together it's so admirable it's the nintendo fanboy in me saying eh you know what you did a good job and that's also why i am not willing to forgive forces at all so i understand okay i get that it is such low hanging fruit to complain about forces so i will keep this brief to not be too much of a broken record here but in the game's credits we have three level designers that are listed the lead who moved over from lost world and the other two whose first ever sonic levels were in forces at this point i think we can objectively say that this game was not given the proper resources to actually be good mechanically yeah things are more or less exactly the same but the stages are just so short and flat and boring it doesn't matter how far into the adventure you get the sonic stages never get interesting it actually does feel like the boost to win nonsense that the other games were accused of but wasn't actually true maybe they just wanted a better gateway sonic experience not demanding the sometimes intense reflexes of the previous games but to go so far in the other direction that was not the right call this is further exemplified in mods for the pc version like the currently work in progress forces reimagined mod which greatly expands some of the existing levels in an attempt to fully take advantage of the darker themes of this war-torn world this is a fantastic mod and i can't wait to see it finished because you can really see the potential trying to be met here but that being said it's not like all of the stages in this game are bad i kind of like egg gate like the music is really good in that and i like the aesthetic of like you know grinding into space that that's kind of cool that's it that that's like the only stage i liked luminous forest is incredibly bland and dark and ends with a snake based quick time event where you don't even need to time your button presses you can kind of just press them whenever and you'll progress just fine you'll just get less points oh no metropolitan highway has this one segment that actually punishes you for boosting that that's great and don't you worry if you weren't tired of green hill zone showing up here once again at the start of the game it's okay chemical plant is here too this was excusable in generations and even mania to an extent since those games were celebrations of sonic's past but when we're trying to look forward and the original sages don't have much positive to work on then yeah that kind of makes those inclusions sting a little bit more in unleashed and generations you need to constantly be ready to pull off moves to react to what's coming next in these grand stages that all feel like natural environments but in forces that's simply not a thing also don't really like that wisps are being shoehorned in as the boost item in this game it goes completely against their original purpose how are they now on the main planet when they're supposed to be in outer space yes this is worth being upset about and why were they in lost worlds too and why did they add a stupid ghost one to colors ultimate and it's like it's not even good the parts of the level where you use it are like broken it's sorry i'll calm down i'll calm down in general while the level design philosophies may have changed from game to game the quote modern sonic gameplay style proved to be really fun colors and especially forces may not have shown that style in its fullest potential but the highs of unleashed in generations make it all worth it and i am so happy that mods for the pc version and even the cyberspace levels in sonic frontiers will continue to explore this idea going forward [Music] sonic but different according to early interviews for unleashed and i'm also paraphrasing here due to sega doing so much to build these large elaborately designed stages only for you to blast through them incredibly quickly well they needed additional gameplay styles of equal quality to ensure the game doesn't take like 30 minutes to complete callers manage to avoid the whole alternate gameplay thing though once again we have the whole reusing level thing instead so it doesn't really count there now this is where we get to go over the werehog for unleashed classic sonic for generations and the duo of classic sonic and the avatar for forces coming hot off the heels of the adventure games 06 secret rings black knight russian riders fans at the time were definitely letting it be known to sega that they were sick of sonic's ever-growing lineup of friends there were just too many of them you already threw a crocodile on my face now i'm expected to like this thing i think chip is a chihuahua i don't know on one hand yes i kind of get it once you start making friends with a sentient sword instead of giving blaze the cat more screen time that she deserves then maybe start dialing things back but i never really had an issue with the series having a really robust cast these characters used to provide unique features that sonic himself couldn't perform which is what they're supposed to do like having chip in unleashed he's fine not the most exciting character in the world but he's a fine enough friend for sonic to pal around with on this adventure though i i don't know man most of sonic's friends are based on animals right so flying chihuahua was the first thing that came to mind when i saw him i'm sorry it just did when i first played this game and one of the early cutscenes that played was him wanting a chocolate covered ice cream i was like oh chip oh god no please don't you're gonna die sega making all of these characters sega making all of these characters that part was fine it was giving these characters the care and attention that they deserve was the problem they just weren't doing that i just i just want marine the raccoon to call home and let us know that she's safe but the true fans only like the sonic stuff right oh tails is in a mech now going fishing as a cat gross finding hermit crabs as a detective agency nah man we only like sonic and i guess at that point sega became too afraid to do things that aren't just sonic so now we have furrier sonic younger sonic and customizable sonic with the gun cool now to generations and forces benefit we have characters that are pseudo parallels to the primary modern sonic the big lanky blue boy we're so familiar with nowadays plays so much differently than the stout blue child from the 90s right well why not embrace it classic sonic is here no boosting no drifting no homing attacks at first it's up to you to simply spin dash and platform in side scrolling fashion and this is great honestly no it doesn't feel exactly like it did in the classics if anything this fits square in the middle of mania and sonic 4 which was really really bad if i need to remind you of that but the stages are all designed well enough with this new engine in mind to equally match modern sonic's approach of reflex and exploration based gameplay like one of the best things to pull off as classic sonic in generations is a ridiculously fast spin dash at the push of a button whenever you want to instead of needing to stand still hold down and then press jump a whole bunch by comparison yes it may not feel as good as mania does but i have played a lot of bad controlling sonic in my days i'll take anything that i can consider good and this definitely falls under that category with solid level designs having modern gimmicks incorporated like the evil fire tornado in crisis city stealing the end of level goal post that is still hilarious and the constantly changing camera angles that keep you on your toes these levels are also a big success and you can also unlock the homing attack for classic after you beat the game and believe it or not it actually kind of makes sense here it really is just a cute little thing to mess around with it's not like the 3ds version of generations or sonic 4 where they infuse the quote classic level design with a bunch of enemies that you have to string together with homing attacks this is just an optional add-on and it is a fun way to change up a typical playthrough because once again totally optional i am way okay with this i love generations classic sonic so what the hell happened in forces i think the sun will blow out before we figure out just why forces classic sonic feels so much worse than generations classic the jumps are much stiffer the single button spin dash is gone springs will pop up all over the place for no good reason the physics are broken as all hell the camera never once shifts away from this basic side view something i thought was great in generations it is actually kind of impressive just how bad this is oh but we got the drop dash now yay the final huh the final classic stage has an auto scrolling segment oh oh my god put the level designers in prison i think today most people agree that classic's inclusion in forces was arbitrary to put it lightly so i will just leave it at that it's been generations since i seen you but the big true gimmick for forces isn't classic sonic it's all about the avatar put your own oc in the game brilliant we've all probably had our own sonic fan character at some point in our lives let's just use them to win a war you ever do the thing where like you type your first name and the hedgehog into a search engine just to see what comes up um so this is me thank you unfortunately though like most other things in forces this whole idea is really half baked you got a bunch of animals to choose from you're always armed with a weapon based on a wisp called a wispon and you have a choice there as well you unlock a million accessories by just breathing in a special way oh my god every stage you finish off by unlocking four or five batches of things in the story you show up to save sonic from a battle that he actually lost it really has all the markings for something that fans can really attach themselves to but once again it all goes back to the level design you end up simply being a less fun version of sonic with an overpowered gun and any unique movement options that you could have like with the grappling hook end up being taken away from you since many of those segments are automated the wispons offering different firepower options does have great potential but they're all equally overpowered so then the main utility comes from some of these shortcuts that you can pull off by touching these wisp capsules then depending on which weapon you chose you can either play through the basic level designs or skip over them instead but then then there's no reason to use anything but the burst wispon since it is the only weapon that does not slow you down while destroying everything within an arm's reach and also gives you an easy to use shortcut tool with its wisp where you just fly over everything the only reason to change up your weapon is if you're bored i guess or if you want to go for some of the extra missions and we'll get to that soon that part is also bad okay oh i'm sliding now oh oh i hate this oh this controls so bad oh i'm just fly oh okay nope don't want to hit these guys these are bad okay oh oh god this is bad this is bad i went off this ride this is so bad and then you got these co-op stages where your avatar and sonic go arm and arm every fanboy's dream and you go save the day but since these styles already feel so similar they don't really serve much of a purpose aside from the whole hey i'm friends with sonic in real life i guess all these end up playing like is just a modern sonic stage but you regularly get stopped to fight hordes of enemies because you have the avatar's gun and then oh occasionally there's the double boost opportunity where you get to put the controller down for a few seconds since the characters will boost automatically even if you don't do the quick time event i am so tired i know i've just been ranting for a little while now but i genuinely love having multiple play styles in these sonic games but this fear that sega had during this generation to divert too far away from what the main sonic style is has just forced the other characters to play a little like sonic but worse which okay let's let's move on to the werehog unleashed can be considered the end of an era in many ways and with the introduction of the werehog this is at the time of this video at least the last time a main sonic game had a drastically different gameplay style to play around with this is what i meant by the quote sega being afraid of different gameplay thing this was back in 2008 they just can't let that part go now i have gone on record saying that while i think the design of this thing is pretty dumb as well as its entire being in execution it's not that bad it was clearly an attempt to capitalize on the god of war trend that many action games were going for back then things are a lot slower paced with combat being the main focus you gain a bunch of new combos throughout your journey but man none of it matters keep pressing x and y a whole bunch until everything goes poof and then you can progress but there are a lot of positives here the nighttime aesthetics are really pleasing each stage manages to stand out with gimmicks that are either unique or bounce off of similar gimmicks in their daytime counterparts and outside of all those incredibly stupid and annoying tightrope walking segments the platforming is serviceable not great not bad just fine the level times though jesus these go on for far too long i know that a two minute beat-em-up stage really can't compete with a two minute speedrun stage but the imbalance between the two with the werehog stages going on for roughly 15 minutes at a minimum can be a bit jarring it is so damn cool and modern days being able to finally play through these in a smooth 60 fps but the long play times combined with the [Music] that plays whenever you get into combat every 20 seconds i could only really mentally get through these easily while listening to podcasts or music or something like that because realistically these can get pretty boring if you sit here waiting for things to really change up as you move forward in the story that is really not the case here what you see is what you get there are some changes here or there but that's kind of it but then oh then there's the final level eggman land oh god this stage is absolutely insane man awesome idea for a finale we got an amusement park setting it's the only stage to blend together both the hedgehog and the werehog i think that's kind of cool and sure walking around these pipes sucks it like really really sucks i hate it a whole lot i died too many times at these parts but while a lot of people seem to share this sort of common hatred for this area i actually think it's a great final act that really sets up the ending a whole lot better than terminal velocity in colors and final judgment in forces god you can even level up sonic in this game both versions of him they were really ambitious with this game increasing the hedgehog's top speed increasing the werehog's power a lot of these changes feel negligible but having a bit of freedom in how you approach the path from point a to point b eh you know what it's okay it's pretty inoffensive but i like the idea and also at the very least the nighttime stages do go a long way to make unleash's world's traveling adventure feel a lot more complete between the daytime and nighttime stages the npcs that are littered throughout as well as the hub world exploration and the couple of flight stages this is arguably the most immersive experience the franchise has ever seen oh yeah the hubs and flight sections you know what i take it back immersion be damned i am not really a fan of these i don't inherently hate hub worlds and like sonic adventure it is cool that you have some sections that you can run through with your full abilities like these areas that house the level portals and there are some hidden secrets to find in them too that's neat it's the rooms with all the people that i hate again it adds to the immersion fine but these just needlessly slowed down the progression with characters that i really don't want to talk to while not allowing me to go at full speed i like that the characters are there i don't want to interact with them and for some of the quests i had to and yeah don't don't like these as for the flight stages like okay i get it again like sonic adventure right but no the flight stages in this game are just press the buttons as they show up that's it ah this sucks again mr nintendo and playstation guy here being told to press a b x y in a timely manner these gave me unnecessary stress one of the achievements is to do the first stage without taking any damage this took far longer for me than it had any right to the thing is though while i don't love these aspects of unleashed i kind of wish that they would polish these concepts up rather than scrapping it for an unintuitive white void in generations or a basic level list in forces those are totally soulless by comparison not saying that we need to overload these games with more variety than they should have i just would have appreciated efforts to implement better world building shouldn't be too hard of a thing we've gotten it before but hell at this point it's the same debate between adventure 1 having a hub world and adventure 2 not it all just comes down to preference please don't get too mad at me and of course to wrap all of this up we got boss fights too and on this front nothing too remarkable honestly many of the games have these 3d bosses that revolve around you chasing them many of the 2d ones require more precision and none of them necessarily stick out as bad they're all at least fine all of the bosses in unleashed are these big fancy spectacles the color bosses have these goofy designs and have fun strategies with all the wisps even though you do fight each one twice you have a different wisp to play with so the strategy changes and i like that generations has these amazing callbacks with the mini bosses against all the different hedgehogs and the main bosses with the likes of the death egg robot from sonic 2 and perfect chaos from sa1 and forces well they're just kind of boring like the rest of the game zavok is lame metal sonic is lame infinite would go on to copy the same exact strategy that metal used so that's also lame and chaos is here but he doesn't get a boss fight cool i guess though this does technically mean that forces is pretty consistent through and through so good for it oh but also shout outs to colors ultimate in particular not the original colors but ultimate for not showing the laser beams for this chaser boss on terminal velocity i love not knowing where the attacks are gonna go so i have to replay the same bs dozens of times only because this is something that ultimate introduced that wasn't in the original it's been over a year and this part still hasn't been patched thanks the final bosses though are a lot more interesting you see unleashed it goes for the adventure era style of locking super sonic behind the final encounter with dark gaia and i always liked this about this era of sonic games the plot made gaia out to be this really massive threat so getting to see a sick cg transformation cutscene as well as our buddy chip turning into a big stone transformer and we get an orchestrated version of endless possibilities this fight is sick i don't care if anyone didn't like the whole monster of the weak formula back then this is awesome generations would attempt to capture this vibe but the time eater sucks its attacks are nonsensical the music is really boring despite having a remix of sonic boom in the soundtrack already that would have made a lot more sense and if i hear anybody warn me of a homing shot one more time i'm gonna rip my ears off [Music] and i get it colors on the other hand is a lot simpler it stuck to just eggman but with that simplicity we did manage to get a pretty neat encounter that again utilizes the wisps in a really cool way i am a big fan of a final boss that uses the powers that you have had access to for the entire adventure hello wario from super mario land 2. and once again we have an orchestrated remix of the main theme song love this it's so good and clearly sega really liked this fight as well since they would kind of reuse it in both lost world and forces oh god why the opening parts of the death egg robot and forces is different but they're kind of annoying and then to go to the part that i've already played in my sonic game almost 10 years prior not a fan just gonna say that but to be fair to forces benefit if you choose to not do the final double boost at the very end of the fight you will just end up running endlessly until you decide to try again without a threat in the world as the music stays on like one weird wobbly note i hate this stupid game but with all of that said this has been the bulk of what makes these sonic games tick from what i can gather most people tend to play through only the campaign and reminisce over only the primary sonic gameplay so under those metrics we can really judge what was and wasn't a success regardless of whatever the consensus was at the time of release forces obviously has its fair share of problems but unleashed colors and generations those are all adventures that i could genuinely recommend to anybody who hasn't played them before maybe you've never played a 3d sonic game before those are great entry points i'm not gonna lie to you forces uh maybe with some drinks i could be convinced to go through that game again because at that point i have nothing to be afraid of so now it's time to complete them [Music] the generations museum all right so this isn't technically part of the completion process but i i don't know where else to talk about it shut up let me live you see all of these games have the very typical cutscene viewer music player unleashed even went the extra mile and had a full-on bestiary but going with the franchise celebration theme generations little museum here is something a little more special there's a model viewer but they all have these cute little blurbs about the characters that's nice there is a ton of concept art to look through there's a music player and while the actual level music of the stages in the game isn't here which is strange there is a chunk of 50 unique tracks that consist of music from the entire franchise sometimes it's pulled from the source games and that's kind of whatever but often times there are slight remixes too you got toxic caves from spinball neo green hill from advance route 99 from advance 3 and hell even race to win from rivals 2 why not ain't even weirder than that there is the secret trophy room i feel like nobody remembers this thing and i can't blame them if you hold select on this specific spot in the museum you will get sucked into another dimension where you can input codes for even more character models this is very strange it's not like sega ever gave these codes out they just ended up being shared online one day and that was it we had access to all of them i don't understand the purpose of these there is no reason to actually input them besides just looking at them but hey shout out to my boy cucky can't forget about my boy cocky [Music] completion the kind of fun stuff hey did you know that you can unlock sonic 1 in generations and it has incredibly botched audio neat everything that we've discussed thus far has been the standard runs from the title screen to the end credits but oh you know there is a lot more to dive into there collectibles of course for when you don't actually want to go fast and you want to comb through all the levels meticulously instead and that's on top of getting as many s ranks as possible oh boy i mean that part that's a pretty easy task all things considered go fast don't die chances are you'll be fine in the case like forces you can even die a few times and still get the s rank you'll you'll be fine look at this in colors i got the screen to say ass but collectibles they have been a thing in sonic games since the beginning but as far as the mainline 3d games go it didn't really become as prominent of a thing until this era and unleashed sun and moon metals in colors red star rings in generations red star rings again in forces red star rings once more as well as number rings and silver moon rings now i know many of you didn't know that those last two things even existed completing forces is a mind-melting experience scattered throughout every single stage across every single game here you got some shiny things to pick up whether they be on the standard path or require a little exploration it's about what you would expect or in the case of unleashed a lot of exploration oh dear god there are too many of these stupid metals all over the place i hate the sun and moon metals so much but yes in general the whole collectible ring thing is fine the blistering speed nature of sonic one would assume wouldn't lead to the slower exploration based platforming to find some shiny trinkets here or there but on multiple playthroughs i don't know man there is some enjoyment to be had in learning the entirety of a map for where these things could be and this is probably where color shines the brightest honestly while the other games are all about just boosting in a different path than you boosted last time thanks to the wisps and colors you really have to experiment with all of your options to find everything and the fact that even in some of those sub 1 minute levels you have some hidden nooks and crannies there too it was definitely the most satisfying to go for all of the rings in this game in particular these also encourage replayability naturally because you often unlock powers in later levels that will unlock paths in previous ones kinda like the accessories in the adventure games it also helps that the game will tell you exactly which coin you got at the bottom of the screen so you have an idea of which one you missed if you do miss one and thank god this is something that forces actually managed to get right as well the other games though well they only tell you in the menu needlessly making the game longer since i end up needing to finish the level first before realizing oh okay it was the second one i missed okay cool got it great on top of that since forces levels are so short and lame getting those rings is easier than ever look at that the game got multiple positives in a row although even then god god this game is stupid after getting all of the stages red rings you then unlock the ability to find number rings so play the level again and collect this chunk of five numerical rings in order where it's nearly impossible to screw up and when you do it's often the fault of the controls because of course it is and then you unlock the ability to find silver moon rings that didn't show up in this stage before so play the stage again and collect this chunk of five rings in a brief time limit why not just have everything available from the start dude i know people complain about the sun and moon metals from unleashed and i get it it is kind of annoying there but i will gladly take that over playing the same stage multiple times because the game decided to arbitrarily hold the unlocks back that is not a good idea unleashed would never have done something like that oh sorry sorry oh i was just i was having some hot dog related war flashbacks um well we'll get to those soon the problem with unleashed isn't so much the metals inclusion again since the levels are so large and sprawling you could argue that these fit exploration the best of all four games especially with the werehog and i mean yeah there are far too many obtuse locations for some of these but it only really becomes an issue when you get blocked from progression because you don't have enough that is the annoying part because it can happen far too often on your quest to simply play the main levels and get to the end credits but that process is made a whole lot easier when you consider the extra levels who can say no to more sonic content not you you're trapped here forever i always forget about this at first since everybody always glorifies the quote main levels but unleashed generations and forces all feature additional challenge based levels and in the case of unleashed a lot of these offer extra medals to add some variety to your completion run so you don't have to replay stage necessarily you can go and check out some new ones each zone has additional acts and unleashed which reuse some level themes for sure but do introduce new designs that admittedly just offer frustration for the sake of it but hey i mean more content is more content colors outside of the egg shuttle which is just all the levels in the game back to back without any menus in between has the game land much more simplistic levels sometimes inspired by stages from sonic 1 with chiptune rearrangements of the standard soundtrack all under the guise of a sonic simulator that eggman uses to practice his evil plans i guess i of like these there's a co-op option for them which seems really not fun so i will never do it but on their own they're just kind of okay generations includes 10 challenges per zone 5 for each hedgehog and it is required to do only one of each to progress so most of them end up being optional but this is where most of the variety is i really like these many of them are simple like a speed run challenge against a ghost sonic or playing with an extended boost bar that you can't fill back up but many of them also take advantage of sonic's cast of friends that is what i like to see using knuckles to dig up rings playing through a stage alongside cream while using the rings that you can only get from a limited amount of chow using grappling hooks with the help of espio these are really cool yeah some other ones offer basic enemy base challenges with some new stage layouts and there are a couple where you have to juggle the goal post to the end of a stage that is an amazing callback and other times you also have a different time of day that is a great aesthetic that i wish was an option in the main game it is just enough variety to make them a fun little alternative but i mostly like how the other characters actually have some stage time in a game where you only play a sonic i like this why don't they do at least this going forward i don't understand and also thanks to the in-game shop you can even add some little tweaks to your play control whenever you want as opposed to unleashed where you upgrade sonic with xp you simply buy them here it's not much but hey fun to experiment with every so often i was a big fan of this whole challenge based idea and i thoroughly enjoyed doing every single one of them except for playing ping pong with a musical note with vector the crocodile and that can go itself there is no way you can make this fun i guarantee it it is the worst thing about this game but otherwise it's an absolute win would you believe me if i said forces failed here too no way in forces we have secret stages and ex stages where you go through existing locations with just the blockiest looking babies first fan game stage layouts i've ever seen in my entire life these are not fun uh they they are like really bad mario maker levels but with sonic so that's cool what wasn't unlockable there's also the randomly popping up sos missions where you play through the main levels again but with a specific gimmick this time play with a randomly created avatar either side by side with sonic or swappable with your avatar or find the hidden animal capsule where you free another avatar and watch them just walk back and forth until the end of time again more content is more content and i love challenge stages so i'm gonna say that they're not terrible but man forces just can't stop feeling uninspired at every single turn it's not me i'm trying i'm really trying to have an open mind with this game but this ah it's making it really hard to stay that way but what about the main goal that you're even working towards with all this collectible stuff there has to be something at the end of the rainbow well of course you get everything in a sonic game and you get super sonic aren't you excited of course no not at all actually by completing all of game land in colors simply beating the game in generations and uh downloading it in forces what you can finally play as supersonic in a 3d space and it's just kind of okay i don't know man maybe this is a bit of a hot take but i was never really a supersonic as an unlockable guy going faster having invincibility replacing the great soundtracks with a repetitive supersonic theme that was just all not my cup of tea if i'm being totally honest with you it's great as an option i know many people love that idea but i gotta say i much prefer the super sonic as a final boss move idea that we got with unleashed and games beforehand like sonic adventure 1 and 2 and so on and so forth i think by having both you clearly get the best of both worlds something we got as far back as sonic 3. generations would have super sonic unlockable sure but it was also one of the main gimmicks for the final boss that i like ultimately this is one of those series staple things that i know i can't be upset about even if i'm not the biggest fan i just don't think the boost nature of these games really makes super sonic an exciting idea i can just boost faster now thankfully the music doesn't change that was always one of my biggest pet peeves with the genesis sonic games so that's kind of nice at least but i would much rather work with the main sonics and just hone my craft and better my speedrun skills there instead of just boosting super fast through without a care in the world but this would also have you ask a very important question wait a minute if supersonic enforces is just a download is there any final reward for completing everything in that game nope you try and convince me this game is good i'll wait okay all things considered for a platformer i think factoring in every playable stage and how the collectibles are handled to be important personally i always wanted to see how much unique content a platformer has to offer i know that not everybody goes for all the collectibles and every platformer ever there is usually an excess of these things so the typical player isn't forced to do every little thing to beat a game and that's why a game like mario odyssey is so much fun to plow through at your own pace but when you start going for all the moons it starts to really slog because that's not the normal thing that you really should do unless you're crazy and just need to see everything else you'll be upset so for sonic standards unleashed and generations expanding on the main levels with either challenges or gimmicks is in my eyes the ideal way of doing things it's the same thing that sonic adventure 2 did by having five missions per stage most of them are optional and i really like that and i'm sorry for all of the sa2 comparisons i'm a sonic fan i only like one game callers does technically have a similar concept with the egg shuttle but again it's just a means to play every single stage again nothing too special but then there's also like the new stupid rival rush mode in ultimate where metal sonic pops in now like an annoying website pop-up it's just a glorified speed run for only a single stage in each zone i don't like these these feel so unnecessary foolish of me to fall into the hype when they said metal sonic is going to show up in colors i was like oh that's going to be kind of cool maybe they'll be incorporated into a kind of redone plot but no now we'll just leave that to the pre-launch web cartoon instead god this god this company but what if i wanted even more gameplay but i wanted to pay for it instead [Music] dlc huh why oh thank god all four of these stupid games have stupid downloadable content that for most of them cost stupid money someone at sega better be happy man someone willingly spent money on the unleashed dlc in the current year and that somebody is me i hope that 12 goes towards future sonic game development because it needs it some of you may be saying wait a minute colors got dlc of course not in the original release obviously but with ultimate sega wouldn't miss that opportunity are you kidding don't act surprised so all of these games handle downloadable content differently for unleashed you get even more stages that are even more frustrating just for the sake of it oh fun hope you like spike traps man because you're about to be acquainted with a million of them there's no additional benefit for going through these it's all just for personal gain and they're really difficult and it doesn't really feel skill based so i can't believe i spend money on this caller's ultimate locked uh cosmetics behind a paywall oh god okay so new to ultimate you can change like sonic's gloves and shoes and if you get the deluxe edition you get gold and silver ones to pick from there's also a special boost design and an aura based around the sonic movie and leaderboard icons this cost money and then the music dlc how can you forget about the music dlc this is the most baffling of all ultimate introduced three new remixes for every zone in the game right well for planet wisp you have to pay extra money to get access to those remixes all the other ones are already in the game you can choose them if you want to listen to them while you play sure i don't really like them that much but hey you have an option at the very least but planet wisp no it's all the original remixes unless you buy this specific deal see what what what do you mean oh and then generations the game where dlc would make the most sense to include even more officially made stages no now we got a pre-order bonus pinball table based on casino night that's it and then for forces for forces there's a sanic shirt oh my god there's al there's also a shadow costume and then other sega costumes for actual money i can't i can't believe this this is what knights and beat have been resorted to i'm so sad oh but thankfully on the xbox store zombiefood247 has a glowing review fought a dad in a gamestop parking lot for this god super sonic was actually meant to be paid dlc for this game too and then thankfully made free forever presumably when sega realized how dumb of an idea that would have been and i know there are some of you forces fans out there going oh but there's also episode shadow please spare me it's a good thing that this is free because this is nothing you get three slightly modified stages where you play as shadow who plays almost exactly like sonic just with a light speed dash and also you unlock the option to play a shadow in 10 of the sonic stages too it's not interesting at all the coolest part about all of this is the fact that there are remixes of music from shadow's own game you play westopolis's theme in the first stage i don't know i kind of like that stupid game so this put a smile on my face if there were any time for shadow to wield a gun once again it would be right about now there's already guns with the wispons it would make perfect sense it's ah it's crazy man you would think these sonic games would be perfect for dlc just look at all the stages that people are making for generations on pc it is so cool you got a bunch of fan service based levels people are making brand new ones there's some cool stuff being done with this engine that sega didn't get to explore enough of challenge levels are neat and all but if these games are just gonna end up being these glorified level packs then give us more level packs but one of the bright sides about episode shadow is there are some story implications showing us that infinite's joker origin story was shadow called him weak and he didn't like that very much that's it and then he put a mask on and got a sick theme song what a compelling villain but whatever like i said i wanted to experience as much original content in this game as i could and i did just that ah and now it's hot dog time [Music] completion i just i just want it all to end my god do these games have you do the most mundane stuff to go for full completion colors thankfully keeps that at a minimum complete an act without picking up any rings beating the bosses in as few hits as possible homing attack 100 enemies it's fine i enjoyed it generations 2 actually pulling a 7-trick combo talk with all of sonic's friends more specific things like don't go into the water in chemical plant or destroy 30 cars in city escape it was generally a pleasant experience going for all the achievements in both of those games people seem to have a major issue with completing the final boss of generations without taking any damage but actually if you just time your dimension shifts a little bit better you'll be fine it only took me a couple attempts it's forces and especially unleashed that should burn in hell forces has a huge list of missions oh you didn't know of course not you probably have a soul oh what's that you hit three enemies with a homing attack in a row good job now do five even though you probably did five when you did the three not do it again and also now kill three enemies with a spin dash as classic you've probably been doing that this entire game but only now will it count i promise you they lock missions behind other missions despite those missions likely already being accomplished with the previous missions it's like the numbered rings and then the silver rings why were they so dead set i'm padding this game out if you wanted to complete it the same goes for the wispons just equip all of them and then destroy some enemies and then go back to the weapon you actually want that's it that's that's the whole process of completing this game you got the expected ones like speed runs and s-rank missions that's all fine and dandy pretty standard stuff once again since these levels are incredibly basic that part was fine but then there's fully maxing out the gold medals as each avatar animal and oh boy now if you're like me you likely created one avatar at the start of the adventure and stuck with it until the very end nope wrong move idiot what you were supposed to do was make a new avatar for each animal and then grind to this one specific stage over and over and over again to accumulate points but make sure to do it within this special exp bonus window where you only have like a half hour time where your points are multiplied because you jumped as modern sonic or some garbage like that this sucks oh my god i hate this game so much because even then if you changed your avatar every time you maxed one out you still would not be done by the time you saw the end credits because the game is so short if you do what i do and i highly don't recommend it you will end up blasting through this same short stage like a million times over the span of like a week because you want to take advantage of those exp bonus windows so you don't do it longer than you already have to but hey bright side i guess i got my time down to 20.49 seconds i understand the appeal of speedrunning now look 88th on the global leaderboards i did it mom and then unleashed oh unleashed i just i never want to see a hot dog again for the rest of my life getting high scores collecting souvenirs to give to professor pickle defeating a bunch of enemies gather a bunch of rings sure that's all fine and dandy then there's like this weird ghost quest that you can go on where you take a camera and you find people who are cursed at night only to battle some enemies in the hub world uh okay sure and on top of that npcs often have side quests sometimes ones that are just revolving around a whole bunch of text like this love story revolving a girl looking for her prince who can be anywhere in the world and it's up to you to find her love uh okay sometimes ones have their own little mini challenge levels with unique designs and sometimes medals they don't tell you which ones have medals until you get to them so i had to use a guide there was no way i was doing every single one of them because a lot of them give you nothing and yes all this means is if you didn't know until now the sun and moon metal collecting for all of them is absolute hell but nothing nothing compares to the hot dog missions i swear to god i'm gonna punch this dude in the face if i ever see him in real life for every single main level this piece of has the audacity the gall to have you play through the nighttime levels six additional times and the daytime levels nine additional times all with arbitrary goals like a high ring count a high enemy kill count a low health bar and all of this with no checkpoints oh what's that you lost 10 minutes into a nighttime stage sorry not sorry do it again i knew i knew these were going to be annoying when i got into them because every time you look at anybody even entertaining the idea of completing unleash they always tell you that hot dogs are the worst thing on the planet they've been saying this since 2008 but i had no idea just how bad these were even in the easier stages early on it's not even like they're overly difficult but playing them over and over with nothing changed i was driving myself insane it's not even like the ring counts are typically difficult you're gonna surpass the goal for level three easily but oh because it's level one doesn't matter do it again and then again it's it's the worst i go god i hate this and it's usually eggman land that gets the most flack and understandably so the stage is already long a typical play through when you don't know what you're doing and there's a lot of deaths it could take upwards of a half hour maybe 40 minutes like it's kind of intense so so when you get to the hot dog guy and he's like oh yeah finish level in 75 minutes there's a good chance you may pass out from seeing that but if i'm being completely honest the fastest route is actually super easy to figure out it still takes like 15 minutes it is a long stage and dying certainly sucks but if you're even slightly committed to doing these stages in the first place then yeah it's it's actually totally fine there are more annoying stages like the longer nighttime cool edge the daytime rooftop run has an abnormally strict time limit i did not like doing that one on its final level sometimes the homing attack straight up didn't work in dragon road that was awesome jungle joyride simply existing with the expectation of getting through without a single death oh boy these examples were far more stressful than eggman land but i did it it added like i i don't even know like 10 plus additional hours to my playtime but i did it and i'm an emptier husk of a man as a result and and even even when i was done with all those there are some achievements revolving around maxing out the levels of every aspect of the hedgehog and werehog which thankfully did become pretty straightforward after doing all the stupid missions but i would hope by beating the game and doing all those missions i would have been done but nope nah of course not don't even consider going for these if you don't plan on doing the hot dog missions oh my god i had to grind even more so after completing those missions to force a million hot dogs down stupid sonic's throat to get past the finish line i can't imagine how much time it would have taken if i didn't do them oh yeah and there's like a food system in this game too where there are shops where you can buy food and then feed them to sonic or chip if you want to there's an achievement for that okay it's mostly to feed sonic to give him experience but the most xp came from these hot dogs and how did i afford all of these hot dogs well because i was stalking this wentos guy around the world to buy items at a low price and sell them at a specific shop for a high price and then i overloaded the hot dog economy naturally completing this game takes like 50 hours sega should go to jail so yeah man i mean if you had any doubts that i was actually not going to be looking at every single thing in these games i hope by now i put your concerns to rest that's exactly what i wanted to do it's not bad oh god i forgot about the stories [Music] the deep sonic lore honestly i am not going to do any crazy deep dives into all the plots and all the characters motivations here or anything like that there is way too much to go over there and i am really not well equipped to do that currently uh i mean god how long into the video are we now but i just have to mention that the thing that i find the most interesting about these games with the stories is like the general gameplay and level designs the philosophies behind these plots are so different from each other for example unleashed is still a holdover of the era where those adventures were so massive in scope where sonic had to stop these massive monsters of the week that eggman learned about 20 minutes ago and can only do it thanks to the help of some new friends he made along the way very much on par with what we got before with games like oh six and secret rings and all that stuff and this can be seen in the production values too like holy the opening cutscene is still one of the coolest and highest quality scenes in the entire franchise it is so sick and to also see that alongside the game's release sega would do these tiny movies with chip in each of the game's countries i love that little bit of character filler to add some depth to the world they're very entertaining but also the animated short knight of the werehog that gave some extra screen time to the werehog this is a level of care and attention that we're only kinda seeing again with the cartoons that are releasing alongside new releases like colors ultimate the styles are totally different but honestly the more the merrier you know what they say the world of unleashed is its best feature even the humans make sense in this style instead of doing these weird realistic humans like an o6 now we have these wacky and cartoonish designs that all attempt to fit in with the styles of the real world inspirations of these zones the game also does a really good job portraying sonic as someone who just wants to help people no matter what instead of constantly cracking jokes all the time while again the werehog is far from the greatest thing in the world a lot was done to make every single story decision of this game work and it is a big shame that in the style shift that would happen soon after a lot of those details would sorely be missed due to the massive complaining about where these stories were going once again sega decided to change course colors completely changed things for the series going forward sonic is still a cocky prick and that's all fine and dandy but now there is a whole lot of comedy and slapstick attempting to capture the vibes of say the old saturday morning cartoons i get it okay i've heard it a million times sonic has that one hilarious line about copyright law partway into the game it's so funny every single time i see it no copyright law in the universe is going to stop me if you post this in the current year i guarantee you are funny and original hell there's no opening cut scene in this game either you press start on the title screen and boom level one that was shockingly a big deal in 2010 and the final boss it's just eggman no crazy demon summoned from the pits of hell it's just baldi mcnosehair himself the stakes are very small in the grand scheme of things more so than ever before we got more goofball characters to watch be goofy like cubot norbot here where orbot wasn't unleashed but he was just kind of there and cuba does have this weird like speaking in the wrong accent gimmick but i don't know a lot of people had an issue with that i found it kind of charming the overload of sonic's friends well i guess none of them got the invite this time around to the interstellar amusement park since only sonic and tails show up to this at the time all of this i swear was really welcomed so many people criticize this game nowadays for being the catalyst of sonic being this harbinger of self-referential humor the era where it doesn't matter if the games are bad look we're selling a mug based off of the sonic 3 barrel it's funny right keep supporting us please and i understand i really do i know why people would be upset about this especially if you grew up with the more epic plot lines of the games prior however anything that happened after colors isn't color's fault in its own bubble colors does a really good job if anything it's weird that the ds version of colors would still follow the old trends by having a bunch of sonic's friends show up as well as a big spectacle of a final boss but hey that's irrelevant i guess and then when generations came out and we were back to being on an hd console i had high expectations and then well the story is practically non-existent that sucks yeah we did get a big spooky final boss again with the time eater but aside from just a couple of cut scenes that don't really add a whole lot to the plot it's just kind of lame there's the opening cut scene there's one time where sonic and tails are both in chemical plant uh and then both classic and modern they do meet up a couple times in the white void overworld but that's that's about it that wow that sucks the writers that were brought on to do colors were brought on to do generations as well and like i i don't think they wrote anything for this game we had all of the opportunities in the world to do a ton of callbacks and references i don't know maybe you finish crysis city and call attention to the fact that it's technically non-canon thanks to the actual ending of o6 something that would have been great maybe do this thing when you're in sky sanctuary zone you actually get to see mecha sonic show up again not metal sonic mechasonic hey just make this game full of references that would have been great why why did you drop the ball here hey sonic enjoy your future it's gonna be great ah but hey you know what okay it's time for forces to finally shine we have a sonic story where eggman already won maybe this is exactly what we've been waiting for sonic is gone amy and tails's tails has just lost it play the clip where knuckle says he could find a use for charmy's pointy butt either to you charming but i still managed to find a use for your pointy butt yep that's the one good uh sonic gets tortured for a few months only to show up again wisecracking jokes like normal tails is a pathetic weakling now despite clearly being able to fend for himself in earlier games classic is so shoehorned into this plot it is insulting especially since now he's like from a different dimension and not a timeline jump what do you mean infinite had the potential to be one of the series great villains only to go down without putting up much of a fight the comic does a whole lot better of a job fleshing out his character as well as the entire concept of the avatar that's fleshed out in that comic as well and all the other participants in the resistance side of the war those are fleshed out in the comic as well but damn if you actually get a reason to care about them within the game itself chaos gets less screen time in this game than stupid zavok who sega promises we will actually care about one day they promise all of the claims that you've probably heard over the years about forces being filled with lost potential i can only echo here like i said earlier forces was not given the proper resources to actually be good and all of these massive storytelling differences between all four games really exemplify one of the core problems with quote modern sonic the inconsistency one of the reasons why so many people are nostalgic for the adventure era stuff and even things like the storybook games and o6 of all games is that no matter the decisions that were made for the gameplay the overall gimmicks some of the story beats that were definitely a little weird it didn't matter they were all presented with confidence and by doing so garnered a niche fanbase that would eventually grow up and be very vocal about what they liked and didn't like and we're seeing that now because people like o6 and that is very weird to see sega would regularly commit to their decisions full stop the voice actors that people would often criticize would improve the cg cutscenes were always top-notch and the villains in these stories gave the characters just enough motivation to see things through to the end color started to scale things back for sure but in generations forces and even games are released at a similar time like lost world and rise of lyric you can tell that it is simply not the same sonic so i don't think you're gonna end up seeing the same vocal nostalgic audience grow in the same way that we see o six in unleashed now man unleashed was so disliked back then and now people love it it's such a weird thing to see man but i understand now unleashed was built with confidence so fingers crossed for frontiers and all the adventures going forward and that is the sonic boost era four games that all try to do very different things with the only main constant being how you controlled quote modern sonic as time has gone on i think most people have agreed on a general consensus for each game unleashed while critiqued at the time was clearly ahead of its time and can be fun if you're open to not always going fast callers while praised at the time introduced a storytelling style that would divide the fan base even further than it already was but on a simplistic level it is still really enjoyable and a lighthearted journey generations is a fantastic celebration of the franchise's history that doesn't ask too much of the player and provides arguably the most replayable levels sonic has ever seen especially with that mod community man you guys are you guys are doing wonders for this game and forces is a game this is an era where sega managed to nail great sonic gameplay but just couldn't help themselves but to sega up some bad decisions along the way that really stopped some of these adventures from truly achieving greatness now with all that being said i am also aware that most of this conversation has been pointless having these games readily available on xbox now is super cool but it's not like this video was gonna sway anybody towards or away from going on the same completion quest that i went on by the way don't don't do that but considering that we will clearly never be free of criticizing every single aspect of a sonic game and the time leading up to a new release i thought it would be interesting to take a step back and look at what sega themselves considered complete and have a better list of talking points as to what a sonic game should or shouldn't do however this is also the same company that screwed up the names of the songs in the dlc part of the sound test for sonic origins uh so so it's not it's not gonna matter anytime soon is it and i am done this is the most painful video that i have done in my career thus far and you better appreciate it or so help me i think at the end of the day the main takeaway here is you should just play games that you're enjoying at the pace that you find comfortable you don't have to complete a game to justify your time with it or the money you spent with it that's absolute garbage you don't even have to beat the game if you're not vibing with it don't be pressured into doing it otherwise that makes no sense play games that you like for as long as you like them that's that's the goal most people do not play sonic games the way i just did but if you do that's cool i never want to do it again and hey that's cool too playing sonic games is cool playing video games in general is cool you're all cool and that's kind of cool but sonic forces is still a bad game i'm looking forward to the negative reactions on twitter goodbye everyone [Music]

Channel: AntDude

Views: 832,062

Keywords: AntDude, Sonic Boost Era, Sonic Unleashed, Sonic Colors, Sonic Colors Ultimate, Sonic Generations, Sonic Forces, Sonic fps boost, Sonic fps boost xbox, Sonic xbox, Sonic Unleashed the movie, Sonic Unleashed review, Sonic Colors review, Sonic Generations review, Sonic Forces review, AntDude Sonic, Sonic ROM Hacks, Sonic Mods, Sonic Fan Games, Sonic Frontiers, Sonic Boost Era review, Sonic Colors Ultimate review, Sonic PS3, Sonic Switch

Id: 2pIIq-04v2g

Length: 74min 39sec (4479 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 20 2022