What Made Sonic 4 Episode 1 So AWFUL

the mid to late 2000s for sonic the hedgehog were well it was a disaster to say the least you start with shadow the hedgehog a game bordering on self parody to a shocking degree followed by sonic the hedgehog 2006 one of the most infamously terrible video games in the history of the medium sonic and the secret rings is well known for its terrible motion controls and repetitive gameplay sonic unleashed decided to bring god of war gameplay into sonic the hedgehog with the werehog and sonic and the black knights are blue boy get crowned king arthur in addition to that sonic was also spammed multiple times a year with spin-offs that had a pretty poor track record when it came to reception these were dark times when the series reputation was digging below the bottom of the barrel however just because that was the status quo on the internet at the time doesn't mean you have to experience it that way sonic never stopped being popular with the target audience regardless of what fans on the internet were saying these dark age games were all financially successful i mean if they weren't we wouldn't get more of them i for one am someone who finds unironic enjoyment in the stages of sonic 06 and appreciation for the ideas it brings to the table i think sonic unleashed executed its god of war gameplay really well and at the end of the day am i having fun with the game is the only thing that really matters to me i grew up with this era of sonic these games mean a lot to me even if i think sonic rivals as bland as all get out i'll still remember the countless hours i spent playing those games in first grade with fondness but of course we have gotten past the dark age of sonic and or for kids error whichever you prefer and are now looking towards the 2010s and there is no better place to start than with the game that changed everything sonic the hedgehog 4 episode 1. [Music] [Applause] by 2010 one thing on the internet was very clear fans of the genesis era of sonic felt alienated by how far the series had gone by games like black knight and really wanted to return to form to be honest i'm not sure why the advance in rush games weren't enough for this crowd i guess they were handheld and weren't as good as the genesis trilogy but i feel like sonic was no different than other legacy franchises they'd do new gameplay on consoles and more retro styled stuff on handhelds but regardless in october of 2010 fans were given the first console 2d sonic game over 10 years sonic 4 episode 1. a game praised at the time of its release for being a short but sweet downloadable adventure as it was exclusive to the downloadable services at the time psn xbla and wiiware for this video i played it on steam and had some pretty bizarre issues like frame drops and visual glitches although the second i stopped recording those issues went away so it's probably not the game of something to do with obs i can't be sure i do own both episodes of sonic 4 on the ps3 and did get some footage from there and then there's also the wii version which is known to have slightly different music but this video will not factor in any of that stuff i'm just basing this off my most recent playthrough with the pc version what's very interesting about episode 1 of sonic 4 is how it's a game that gets worse with time i think you can see trouble on the wall for this game as early as the pre-release fans online hated sonic's cast of characters so much that a big part of the marketing campaign was how none of them were in it to me that already speaks volumes to this game's commitment to have less content than ever before if you read the title you know i think sonic 4 episode 1 is one of the worst 2d sonic games i've ever played i get that sonic blast or whatever is worse technically but i can't think of a 2d sonic game so frustratingly proud of being so mediocre just look at the title screen this is the official render of sonic from this game and look at this animation sonic's hand is a moving gif that's separated from the body that moves like 2 seconds per frame yes i said that how i intended compare the title screen of sonic 1 to sonic 4 and the gap in expressiveness is so clear as sonic from 4 just lifelessly stares at you like i said this game's devotion to mediocrity is seen in numerous ways just look at the visuals this game looks horrible sonic 4 was released in the era of 8-bit nostalgia as the nes big games were turning 20 years old mega man 9 was a big part of the retro console revival in 2008 mega man 9 and 10 faithfully stuck to the nes art style sonic 4 decided against being a 16-bit throwback to the original games instead going for whatever this is i can't even call this an hd art style i mean sonic is 3d but he looks so out of place in the environments he runs through areas that look so fake and plastic on their own merits anyway when it comes to visual appeal this game just looks terrible background assets being even worse than foreground ones as they look incredibly low poly as do the enemies this is an area where i think a pixel art style would have helped the game looking at the backgrounds of marble zone or spring yard zone in sonic 1 they obviously don't look super complex and detailed but you can buy into the environments looking more minimalistic with pixel graphics in 3d it just doesn't translate and it leads to this game looking incredibly cheap and budget just look at eggman's exploding here with no change in facial expression it just looks bad there's also a bit of mismatch here as they decided to go for a chiptune soundtrack by june sonoy and honestly i think the music in both episodes of sonic 4 is great stuff i'm not sure if that's an unpopular opinion but when playing levels like splash hill or lost labyrinth i just think the music is the best part [Music] the aforementioned mismatch being that the game has this chiptune music while also not having pixelated graphics it's just a very bizarre game which leads right into the mechanics i don't consider myself a purist when talking about how sonic should handle in 2d i do think the genesis trilogy is the best place to start but i'm not the type of person who would be against a 2d sonic game just because it wasn't a perfect reflection of those controls sonic advance 1 provided a decent replication of that style advance 2 and 3 had their own mechanics that added to the 2d formula the rush games had the boost and so on point is i'm not saying the game was going to fail from not being 100 accurate to the original trilogy it's up to the game in question to be fun when playing sonic 4 the problem is that how it plays is just not fun let's start with how sonic moves in the genesis games moving the d-pad would see sonic begin a light jog that would transition into a sprint then he would reach top speed sonic 4 adds a whole other phase to this where moving the d-pad sees sonic awkwardly start walking for a couple of seconds then the jog then the sprint then top speed it just feels bad to play as the spin dash also doesn't provide much in keeping top speed instead what you need to do is mash the jump button to do a mid-air dash and with this you will reach top speed at the same rate as the previous games so we're starting with sonic just feeling off and slow compared to older titles but then playing as him in these stages is even worse by now everyone knows that the physics from the early games are nowhere to be seen in sonic 4. take this u-shaped area and casino street zone for example you can try and try to roll into a bulb pick up speed but that's just not a mechanic in sonic 4. that's a fundamental screw-up when what set sonic apart from other platformers the time was his ability to gain speed and use said speed to get through areas he could not before like the wall of green hill zone act 2 from sonic 1. sonic's level design was just built in a way that was completely different from mario mega man and other 2d platformers and that was a result of the physics-based platforming the biggest insult to injury being the parts we are running up walls in this game you can stop and just stand there on the wall like your spider-man that's the money shot really the moment you know sonic 4 has fundamentally failed to recreate the experience of the originals to circle back to what i was saying a brief moment ago sonic 4 would not have to be a perfect recreation to be a fun game since i can enjoy most of the other 2d sonic games but in sonic 4 we have a sonic that feels terrible to play and can't do simple things he could do in 1991 and for what these are some of the lamest sonic levels i've ever played demps developed both episodes of sonic 4. they handled the advanced scams and rush games prior to this in advance to and onward dimps had a reputation for making their sonic levels packed to the brim with blind sides and instant death hazards you could not see coming i'd say sonic 4 brings this in with a vengeance since sonic has no physics the game plasters dash pads and springs all over the levels to take you from place to place and they use this to put in some really cheap obstacles like spikes you couldn't see coming or enemies that came on the screen too fast for you to react to like these moments in the first acts of splash hill and lost labyrinth or like i said surprise pits that come out of nowhere like this part of mad gear zone i didn't know that was a pit and then i died there like two more times because of the slippery controls through dash pads and springs the devs have control over the pace of the game and use that power to annoy you as much as possible and that really irks me the longer the game went on they also got really lazy with the level design in another sense i already mentioned that the air dash was in this game so that basically let the cat out of the bag and revealing that the homing attack from the 3d games is in fact in sonic 4. the homing attack was in advance 3 when sonic partnered with cream and was one of his abilities in sonic rush but they never were central mechanics because in 2d the problem of accurately hitting enemies at high speed isn't a thing the whole reason the homing attack exists even going back to sonic 3d blast on genesis was to increase the player's accuracy in hitting enemies since the mechanic is very redundant in 2d they force you to use it by repeatedly having enemies in midair the most homing attack sonic colors in the ds had enemy chains like this as well but that contributed to your boost gauge which incentivized using it here they just make you homing attack enemies over and over to progress and they make it as slow as possible as you have to wait for the rebound animation to play before you get the next hit in they also force a dependency on the homing attack by having sonic uncurl from his ball form off of slopes so you're defenseless in the air without it great game we got over here the levels themselves are very uninspired the game has four zones splash hill casino street lost labyrinth and mad gear all of which obviously borrow directly from green hill casino night labyrinth and metropolis mad gear zone even has the same three enemies from metropolis zone sonic games having tropes is fine i don't see a problem with emerald hill or palm tree panic in sonic 2 or cd a throwback level like sunset hill and advance 3 is also fine by me because it's just that in a sea of new stages and concepts acknowledge the past while trying to move forward but what i see in sonic 4 episode 1 is a cynical attempt to grab onto as much nostalgia as possible by lazily reusing every single stage in the game from one you've already seen before this is one of the reasons why i find the title sonic 4 to be a joke sonic 1 has 6 zones with 3 acts each giving the game 18 stages sonic 4 has 4 zones with 3 acts each giving the game 12 stages the game cannot rival sonic 1 in total content and the content that is there is entirely reused ideas with bad game feel going back to the video i did on sonic 1 2 cd and 3k the thesis of that video was that sonic was set apart from other mascots with his unique gameplay and the ever expanding characters in world building with each game i just compared sonic 4 to sonic 1 but it gets even worse when comparing sonic 4 to sonic 3 and knuckles which has 24 main stages double the content of its supposed sequel sonic 4. please don't bring up sonic 3 being split in two halves because they did that for reasons that had nothing to do with the actual game design sonic 3k is the intended experience sonic 3k is a pretty epic game new rival an epic climax him changing sides at the end stakes it's pretty cool each game in the classic series got bigger than the last introducing new characters and story lines which is the attitude that led into the modern games that did the same thing to have a game as bad as sonic 4 be so confident in it going back to the basics and by basics i mean sonic 1 with less content while calling itself the direct sequel to sonic 3 and knuckles is an embarrassment to say the absolute least i can't even talk about the story in this game because there isn't one the plot is eggman has pissed at sonic for foiling his schemes and now he will fight sonic like i said there is no story in this game just run through levels and play which aren't fun anyway so great that's basically everything i want to say about this game but of course it's not over yet as we have special stages to talk about getting to them works just like sonic 1 and cd where you collect 50 rings and holding on to them by the end of the stage lets you jump into a giant ring at the end although good luck because in this game you have like a five second window of opportunity [Music] every game in the classics did something completely different for the bonus stages but here not so much it's the special stages of sonic 1. but to be fair i'd actually say these are better than that game and the best part of this game in sonic 1 the board would spin and you had to control sonic through that in sonic 4 you control the board itself not sonic which makes it a lot easier to predict where sonic's going to go since you're controlling what angles he's going to bounce off of even get a retry option if you come close to failing and it's pretty good like i said i actually really enjoy the special stages in this game the seven emeralds unlocked super sonic once collected which at the time was a pretty big deal none of the advance in rush games let you be super sonic this being his first non-final boss fight playable appearance since sonic 3 or sonic r i guess well for counting racing games then i guess you could play as super sonic and riders never mind you can also get into special stages in act 3 in this game unlike sonic 1 since the bosses are a separate stage not put at the end of act 3. the bosses themselves are something i have next to nothing to say about as three of them are lame repeats of the bosses from the original stages the exception being lost labyrinth because the original stage didn't even have a proper boss fight if it did i bet you they would have reused it the boss in mad gear zone does have a second phase where you chase him but there's really not that much to say because like the classics the bosses are fairly easy only problem being this game's homing attack rebound period and boss invincibility frames that make them last way longer than they should following mad gear zone you get access to the egg station zone not a final level but instead a host of one of my least favorite game tropes a boss rush replay the same four bosses you already played but this time with a new backdrop the game is now recycling itself but this leads to the true final boss the egg station robot that's just supposed to be a crazier version of the sonic 2 final fight you have rings in this fight so that reduces the challenge by a large sum but still i don't like this fight because of the long ass homing attack rebound animations making it so that you can't get more hits in further dragging the fight on and on and the fact that when the last hit comes you have like six seconds to hit him or else you automatically die and have to do the three minute fight all over again when you do beat it you get the sonic 1 ending again since i didn't get all the rings in this what should be a cut scene i didn't get the super sonic ending but i was not playing that boring last stage just to see that i still got the ending teaser where the game shows metal sonic and says to be continued that's all that really matters i basically gave my final thoughts on this game a moment ago but to reiterate i think this game is a joke when thinking about other 2d sonic games they always bring something to the table like advance one's amy campaign advance 2's boost mode advance 3's partner system rush's boost rush adventures island hopping colors ds's wisps the racing gimmick of rivals the console accuracy of pocket adventure the novelty of the game gear series and then i look at sonic 4. this game is a husk of nothing so proud of itself for being a boring mobile phone quality game that doesn't match sonic 1 in content sold to you so they can make a quick buck off your nostalgia i hate that about sonic 4. if this was just a mobile game then it would be decent but for a console game called sonic 4 this is embarrassing thing is this game actually did get a mobile port and that was how i first played it yeah my nostalgia for sonic doesn't just stop when she reads 2010 i mean i really wanted to play this game because it was a new sonic game but i didn't because i didn't have an account on ps3 360 or wii september of 2011 was when i got my first phone the iphone 4s god that was 10 years ago but it was so cool i could watch all my favorite youtubers but not on the house computer and with my new phone i was able to get sonic 4 on the app store this being the old mobile sonic 4 before the update came out in recent years in that sense i have nostalgia for sonic 4 but like i said it's aged like cheese as time has shown the game has nothing to offer besides cynical nostalgia pandering that couldn't even get the details right a trash game and one of my least favorite sonic games to ever exist and the true starting point of the meta era yeah the meta era wasn't a name i just came up with for the main games sonic 4 is a very important part of it because sonic 4 kicked off the nostalgia thing that defines much of the meta era it's got to be included it's one of the signature games but on that note the game that kicked off the other traits of the meta era was the big sonic team game of 2010 sonic colors released on the wii expect that video very soon and believe me you won't want to miss it if you like the previous videos but as of today thank god the video is over now i never have to play sonic 4 ever again and can just uninstall it from my pc that sounds fun thanks everyone for watching and i'll see you next time

Channel: J's Reviews

Views: 376,996

Keywords: sonic, sonic 4, sonic the hedgehog, sonic 4 sucks, sonic 4 review, sonic the hedgehog 4, sonic 4 episode 1, sonic 4 physics, sonic 4 is bad, sonic adventure, sonic 4 bad, sonic 4 ost, why sonic 4 is bad, sonic 4 pc steam, sonic 4 episode i, sonic 4 gameplay, J's Reviews Sonic, J's Reviews Sonic 4, Sonic Meta Era, Meta Era

Id: 4dvDPIyF6fw

Length: 17min 35sec (1055 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 21 2021