It's taken me a long few years of in-and-out Sonic the Hedgehog worship to figure out exactly why most of the blue blurs recent games suck as hard as they do. Sure, Secret Rings was fun and for the most part, glitch free, and the Adventure titles were a pair of good games, but something about Sonic has really been missing since Sonic Heroes graced our consoles with the return of the Chaotix (in their most embarrassing form yet!)
But it wasn't until I recently purchased Sonic and Knuckles on X-Box Live Arcade in the past month that I realized what really set the old Genesis titles apart from every game since, and why the so-called "nostalgia fags" that are constantly harassing the direction Sega is going should really be listened to. See, there's a problem with all of the new Sonic games, and it doesn't come from Sega. It comes from the fanbase.
And surprisingly, it isn't the millions of punk rock fan characters.
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| Because sometimes, you just have to write horrible fanfiction. |
No, the problem with the current Sonic games, everything from Sonic Advance through Sonic Colors, and inevitably, Sonic Generations has fallen short of being fun due to the simple fact that fans have this addiction to speed. They are on a constant adrenaline rush, and they just keep urging Sega to make the Sonic games faster and faster, but as anybody who's ever slept with the hedgehog can tell you, faster is often way the fuck worse.
After all, who really needs to see where they're going? So long as the colors are smudged, the rings are flying, and the blue guy can cruise from this side of the screen to Mars in half a second, what else really matters? Isn't that how the old games played out? Rewarding players for being the fastest thing alive and spindashing across the tops of all those loop-de-loops you slowpoke turtles keep falling off of?
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| Actually, no. Stop being stupid. |
The old games were about platforming. Sure, they may have been one part "Nintendo can't process like us!" but they were many, many parts "moving elevators in the sky!" What made the old Sonic games such classics was their ability to blend a speed that could be comprehended by the human eye with some top notch platforming puzzles. A lot of the stages forced Sonic to slow his ass down so he could do things like swing from monkey bars or not get melted by a waterfall made of lava.
The biggest problem every game after Sonic Adventure 2 has had has been the overwhelming and back asswards opinions of the Sonic fanbase. There seems to be a collective desire to "bring back the old Sonic." To make him play like he used to, back in the Genesis days. However, running right alongside that point is this overwhelming drive for making the Sonic games "faster." Unfortunately the faster Sonic gets, the less Genesis he becomes, and the less platforming you can even hope to incorporate into a game, because at the rate most fans seem to think Sonic should be running it would be impossible to tell when the hell you're supposed to jump or not. Which is exactly the biggest fucking problem with the latest batch of Sonic games.
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| Better give the fans what they want... |
The people ruining Sonic isn't Sega, you morons. It's you! Every single one you that cries out for the "faster" Sonic gameplay is contributing to the garbage that Sega thinks it should be making. When it turns out that this isn't what you wanted, your stupid ass goes online and starts bashing Sonic Team for churning out another game that doesn't live up to your specifications. The problem is it does.
The situations has become so confused that Sega doesn't know what the hell to give fans anymore, and we're soon going to be hit in the face with Sonic Generations, which, if it's anything like the demo was, is going to be like taking a sledgehammer to all of your sexual organs at once. And then dropping an anvil on them just as they start to feel better. They got the aesthetic down, woohoo, but they fucked up yet again because you all wanted your precious speed. There is absolutely no room for any kind of puzzle solving or platforming in new Sonic games, all because you people gotta go fast. Gotta go faster, faster, faster, faster, faster!
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| The embodiment of everything that went wrong with this franchise. |
Before I go, let me just reiterate this point so that you all understand it.
YOU WANT THIS:
NOT THIS:
YOU WANT THIS:
NOT THIS:
YOU WANT THIS:
NOT THIS:
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| Unless you like AIDS. |
