#because sonic boom is very different from the sonic games and often uses camera and music-based references

[solalunar-eclipse]

Sonic Boom - S3E1

Episode title: Friendship 101

Word count: about 3000 words

Author’s Note: I’m trying a rather new format for this fic, since it’s based on a TV show with various songs and camera angles. If you have any comments about whether it works well or not, please let me know!

(Also, the theme song choice is all thanks to khinesthetic, who used it here and inspired me to put it in this fic.)

Next

[cue Mr. Blue Sky by ELO (0:00-3:45)]

[The show opens on a zoomed-out view of Hedgehog Village from above. Stone walls separate the village from the wilderness outside. There are large spaces at several points throughout the structure for entry and exit. A large patch of grass with benches scattered about sits at one end of the village, and a marketplace made up of wood-and-cloth stalls runs along one of the walls. Houses are grouped in seemingly random clusters throughout the town, and the (in)famous Meh Burger stand sits all on its own, with picnic tables spread across its wooden flooring. As the music progresses, the camera begins to zoom in on the village- then on one of the streets in particular- and rotates down to eye level to face…]

Sonic the Hedgehog walked through the streets of Hedgehog Village with a bounce in his step, occasionally dancing to the music playing through his earbuds. As he wandered throughout the town, he passed the usual people running their stores, arguing over botched orders at Meh Burger, and, at one point, Aqua the Rabbit absolutely freaking out over the loss of a single follower on Angstagram (the latest social media network for moody teens).

He did a 360-degree spin before winking and pointing finger guns at Amy Rose when he spotted her haggling with the local grocery store owner. She paused briefly to wave at him with a smile. “Hi, Sonic!” she called, completely ignoring the irritated fennec in the process.

Then, the music froze and changed to something extremely ominous as she turned around to face the shopkeeper once more. A dangerous gleam appeared in her eyes as she pulled out her signature hammer. “Now then, about those prices you’ve been setting lately…”

The song cut back in as the view switched back to Sonic, who was now moving away from the scene at a slightly faster pace.

Really, though, he was more than happy to see his other friends not long after. Knuckles and Sticks were currently busy rummaging through the town’s garbage together, excitedly chatting about the latest piece of interesting junk they’d found, while Tails was fixing someone’s broken rain gutter (and attempting to ‘improve’ it in the process, which meant that it could now measure the amount and intensity of rainfall in a storm- a very useful, though unfortunately unwanted improvement).

Surprisingly enough, as he continued on his way through Hedgehog Village, he managed to get people from a few different places to wave back at him when he said hello. Although perhaps it wasn’t quite so surprising when one considered that this was one of the most cliched opening sequences that could possibly happen in any movie or TV show. Ever.

And of course, the only logical outcome of this scene led to everyone beginning to stop their usual activities and gather in one of the few open spaces in the town, clearly prepared to break into a fantastic musical dance number straight out of Broadway. Incredibly, this was one of the few moments in which everyone in the village seemed to be able to get along…

...until Eggman’s latest giant robot slammed feet-first into the ground, sending everyone off-kilter and scrambling for cover. Shrieks of panic rose in place of the music as the villagers fled the scene to hide in their houses. The dramatic entrance didn’t just ruin the mood, it absolutely crushed it with the sheer force of its impact.

And that was, obviously, when the show really began.

[cue In Your Face by Shockwave Sound (0:00-1:04)] 

[Each of the five members of Team Sonic appears on a black screen with their name spelled out in their signature colors (blue, yellow, red, pink, and green) and does a couple of cool fighting moves, followed by snippets of scenes featuring them from previous episodes of the show for about eight seconds each. All five of them then appear together in their usual fighting stances, emphasizing their status as a team.

The Eggman logo then appears in an ominous, glowing red, backlighting the doctor himself and all his creations- before the lights flick on to reveal him alone in his evil lair with a green screen behind him, at which point he shrieks and covers the camera with a hand. Then, neon blue electronic lines begin to appear across the screen and the camera spirals to follow them, selecting one particular line to trace. Not long after, said line ends at a circle which, with a flash, turns into the words ‘Sonic Boom’. Beneath the title, it says ‘Ancient Secrets’ in neon blue.]

[Then the music ends, at which point the episode title- “Friendship 101”- appears for a few seconds in the same color before the show itself returns.]

Sonic scrambled to his feet and zipped over to Tails, pulling him up from where he’d fallen after the robot’s overdramatic arrival. Amy managed to do the same with both Knuckles and Sticks simultaneously, which let Sonic stare for a moment, startled, and then promptly resolve to remember not to get on her bad side anytime soon.

Soon enough, the team had scrambled into their usual positions, ready to fight. Amy and Sticks kicked the battle off by handling the various smaller robots that threatened to get too close to their team, never faltering (and in fact seeming a bit gleeful in the badger’s case) despite the sheer number of enemies. Knuckles, meanwhile, launched Sonic bodily into the air for Tails to catch, before picking up a boulder about the size of a house and lobbing it directly at the robot’s chest.

“Hey! Easy with the boulders- QuakeBot took a lot of effort to make, you know!” Eggman shrieked from above, hovering in the relative safety of his Eggmobile. 

(Relative, in this case, was of course in comparison to mixing absurdly volatile chemicals in a lab, bothering Shadow at any and/or all hours of the day, or being on Tails’s bad side when the fox had a glue gun. The doctor still remembered that situation all too well, and currently ranked it as far more terrifying than merely being punted into the stratosphere by kids under half his height and about a third his age.)

Sonic paused to stare at Eggman from where he was currently dangling in the air. A smirk began to spread slowly across his face. “…what did you just call it?”

“You heard me the first time!” the doctor roared, now incredibly embarrassed. “I named it that since it makes the ground shake when it moves, like an earthquake??”

General laughter came from the heroes assembled on the ground and in the sky.

“Argh! Nobody appreciates my genius around here! Now, QuakeBot, stop standing around and start attacking!”

“I suggested TerraBot, since it still has to do with earth and is a play on the word ‘terror’, but nobody ever listens to my ideas, now do they?” Orbot muttered irritably to himself, tucked inside the Eggmobile.

“I listen to all your ideas!” Cubot offered encouragingly.

Orbot’s mouth shifted into a small smile. “Thanks, Cubot.”

Meanwhile, Sonic had been pulled into a spin by Tails, who whirled the hedgehog around before letting him shoot downwards toward the robot in a spin dash- only for him to get caught and sent flying into the nearest house.

He shook off the surprise quickly (and apparently sustained absolutely zero damage despite having literally crashed through a house, because superpowered teenagers), darting back over to the group. “Well, uh, guess it’s time for Plan B then!”

Crickets chirped in the ensuing silence. Even the robot had stopped moving to hear what he had to say.

“And the plan is…?” Amy prompted.

Sonic folded his arms with a huff. “I dunno, I thought you guys would have one!?”

The pink hedgehog rolled her eyes at that. 

Tails piped up. “I have an idea! Sonic, you’re going to need to be curled up for this, okay?”

The hero promptly did just that, before emitting a muffled “mmhmm?” from inside his layers of quills.

“Alright then, Amy, I need you to hit Sonic with your hammer right at the side of this house.”

Sonic’s blood ran cold. “Whoa whoa whoa, wait a second can we maybe rethink thiaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAHHHHH!”

He ricocheted all over the palace like a pinball, slamming into several key points of the robot thanks to Tails’s rapid calculations. However, the robot was sadly unaffected by his screaming at a pitch that came dangerously close to shattering glass.

The robot was easily disabled and the attack overall quickly repelled after that. Thankfully, it took Sonic only a moment to recover from his impromptu stint as an out-of-control projectile and get back to fighting with the others…complete with a “Let’s do that AGAIN!” moment, which was met with a resounding no from both Amy and Tails. 

Their ears were both still rather sore from last time, after all.

After Eggman was punted all the way back to his island by a well-placed kick from Sticks, though, the crew was about to head over to Meh Burger for a post-battle meal when they discovered that they had an entirely different problem to take care of. The villagers, who were beginning to come out of hiding after the attack, were furious upon seeing the damage dealt to their homes and stores.

“How could you let this happen?” one shouted.

Before long, the villagers found themselves a more specific target when the owner of the house that Sonic had smashed into pointed her finger directly in his face. “This mess is awful!” she cried. “And it’s all his fault!”

Within seconds, a mob of people had descended upon the overtaxed teen.

“I’ve never known a hero so irresponsible.” one fumed.

“How dare you!” the fennec from earlier roared.

The elderly wolf of the village shook her cane at him. “Shame on you!”

Sonic could feel himself beginning to tense up as the villagers turned their ire on him. Whether or not he’d admit it to anyone, he needed two main things in order to be his usual heroic, cheerful self: open space and positive reinforcement. Right now, he was getting exactly the opposite of both of those.

And he was not feeling good about it.

He looked briefly over to his friends for help, but Sticks had already vanished, Knuckles and Tails looked more nervous than anything, and Amy was already walking towards him with that look in her eye…

“Sonic, next time you do need to work on making sure the robot doesn’t catch you, you know-”

A streak of blue shot out of the village, leaving nothing but a scorched trail of grass and the snap of a sonic boom behind.

Sonic didn’t slow down until he reached the mountains- which technically wasn’t very far from the town at all, so he ran quite a bit more after that until he ended up in the middle of the jungle. Then, he sat down with his back to a tree and his arms around his knees, feeling very unheroic and overall pretty lame.

The blue hedgehog frowned at the dirt. Honestly, some days it really did feel like nobody seemed to like him. The only person who ever even suggested he was important on a regular basis was Tails, and Sonic didn’t blame him at all for not jumping into the middle of that crowd. Tails was only thirteen to his seventeen and a half years old- not exactly an age when he should be expected to go toe-to-toe with a crowd of angry adults.

Still, though. When being a hero got him all risk (no matter how low) and no reward...it was difficult for him to keep hold of that core feeling of “I can make the world a better place to live in!”, which, despite all his other claims, was truly at the center of what had motivated him to start fighting against Eggman so long ago…

[The scene morphs in a manner which shows the lighting shifting so that the sun is overhead. A sound effect of birds chirping plays over the scene change. This implies that it’s been several hours since he first fled the village.]

Sonic was still lost in thought when the snap of a twig in the bushes made him jump to his feet in surprise. The surrounding vegetation rustled ominously for a moment...only to reveal the four members of his team in front of him. He watched them all cautiously, his expression tense. More than anything, he looked ready to run at a moment’s notice- something which only served to make his friends(?) seem a little more distressed. “Uh…hey, guys?” he began tentatively.

“Sonic, I…” Amy began forcefully, before stopping herself. At first, it looked like she was about to scold him again, but then suddenly her face fell. “Listen, Sonic, we’ve all been talking a lot about what happened back at the village…and there’s something I want to say.” She gave a slightly tired sigh. 

“I know we usually like to make jokes and witty commentary, but...sometimes, the world’s just a difficult place to be in.” she said. “...so we really do need to talk about serious stuff occasionally, even though I know it’s tough for you to even mention how you’re feeling. Unless, you know, it’s ‘great!’ or ‘cool!’ or something like that.”

Sonic cringed at the mere idea, looking more and more like he thought running away was the preferable option here.

“So what I wanted to say was that in a world where there are too many people trying to beat you down...what I was trying to do was tell you how to be more tolerant, because I thought that would help. I figured you can’t change how other people are going to be, just yourself, so I hoped that might make things better.

“But...I’m not actually a licensed therapist- yet, anyway. So I might have been wrong on how I went about that. Maybe...instead of telling you off for not being able to stop all those people...in the future I’ll pull out my hammer and tell them to knock it off already. Does that sound better to you?” she asked.

The blue hedgehog froze. “Ames…I...” he croaked, trying his best not to think about why exactly it felt like his throat was so tight all of a sudden.

Sticks folded her arms. “I like that plan! Those people are way too crazy sometimes…and you guys know I have a verrrrry high tolerance for crazy.”

“We can make the villagers quit bugging you together, just like how we fight Eggman!” Knuckles added encouragingly. “It’s always better that way, isn’t it?”

There was still one person who hadn’t spoken yet, though.

Suddenly, Tails crashed full-force into Sonic, squeezing him in a hug that for once he didn’t pretend to hate. “You know I’ve always, always, always got your back, right, Sonic? No matter what?” he asked, looking up at his older brother. “Even if I don’t always know how to do it right.”

The blue hedgehog simply nodded, not trusting his voice to help him maintain his ‘cool guy’ status.

“It’s okay if you don’t feel up to talking about it now, though.” the fox added understandingly, stepping back but still leaving a hand on his arm. 

“But!” Knuckles added. “We won’t tell anyone if you ever decide you do need to get some stress off your chest every once in a while!” He smacked his own chest with a fist for emphasis.

“Nobody needs to know.” Sticks growled, the camera suddenly showing a dramatic angle of her face as the lighting dropped noticeably.

“Uh…that’s kinda dark.” Sonic said, holding up a finger with a bit of a confused frown, which let the lighting and camera angle zip back to normal.

“Anyway!” The pink hedgehog clapped her hands together, turning to face the group as a whole. “What do you guys think about heading over to my house and watching some movies? I’ll even…” She sighed, her whole body slumping. “…make some messy, simple, unprofessional chili dogs. In my state-of-the art kitchen. I know Sonic probably could use a pick-me-up right now, after all.”

“Thanks, Ames! You’re the best!” the hedgehog in question said cheerfully, the promise of good food and great companionship boosting his mood significantly.

Then, his posture shifted once again into something a little more vulnerable. “And thanks to all you guys. For, y’know, everything.”

“Of course!” Amy chirped.

Tails smiled at him. “No problem, Sonic.”

Sticks folded her arms. “That’s what a team’s for, ain’t it?”

“Of course it is!” Knuckles said, in that rather confusing manner where nobody was actually sure if he understood anything about what had just happened.

The echidna actually walked over to Sonic after that particular declaration, though, placing a hand on his shoulder as his face became uncharacteristically serious for a second. “Really, Sonic, we can all help you out, alright? Nobody gets to yell at our leader without getting yelled at back!” he declared, punching a fist into his other hand.

The hedgehog blinked twice before looking up at his friend. “You…just called me the leader?”

“Well, duh! That’s why everyone calls it Team Sonic, right?” Knuckles asked with a smile, letting an awkward (but genuine) grin spread across Sonic’s face.

Within seconds, the hero found himself squeezed in a big hug from all sides by his friends- and then actually lifted off the floor through a joint effort from Knuckles and Amy. 

“Guys- come on! I can’t even move here!” he cried out, his legs flailing so quickly they made a vibrating noise in the air. “Guyyyyssss….” he whined, though nobody seemed to care much about his halfhearted complaints (judging by the happy expressions on their faces).

Then, the episode began to end, as evidenced by an iris out transition. The slowly shrinking circle paused for a moment on Sonic’s current expression, highlighting it against the otherwise black screen. He now sported a sheepish, if slightly pleased smile, complete with a faint pink blush on his face from all the positive attention. 

Clearly Sonic liked being, well, liked far more than he let on.

Then, the circle snapped closed with a pop, and the credits began to roll.

[Voice Actors: 

Roger Craig Smith

Colleen Villard

Travis Willingham

Cindy Robinson

Nika Futterman

Mike Pollock

Kirk Thornton

Wally Wingert

Bill Freiberger

Original creation by:

Evan Baily

Donna Friedman Meir 

Sandrine Nguyen

Bill Freiberger

Takashi Iizuka

Writer/editor:

Solalunar “Sol” Eclipse

Thank you for watching reading.]

[aotopmha]

Sonic the Hedgehog turned 30 years today.

In celebration, I downloaded all 3 classic games available for mobile and tried to get as far as I could before getting a game over.

For Sonic 1 it was Marble Zone Act 1, for Sonic CD it was the Collision Chaos boss and for Sonic 2 it was the Chemical Plant Act 2 boss.

I'm much better at these games on an emulator/PC, using the arrow keys rather than a controller (or apparently with the android touch controls) because that's how I've played them the most.

Sonic is probably the franchise I've (on and off) followed the longest and I remember fairly precisely when I played my first Sonic game: it was in my second year in school, but I stopped because the crusher section in Hydrocity terrified me and I couldn't get past it.

I also have vague memories of both of the most famous old cartoons and briefly trying the PC version of Sonic CD and Sonic 3D Blast.

My next notable experience with a Sonic game is actually the old Newgrounds game Ultimate Sonic Flash.

This is what opened the Sonic floodgates with other stuff for me, too.

Besides that game there were the flash animations like Nazo Unleashed and Super Mario Bros Z that also appealed to the Dragon Ball fan in me.

Through that stuff, I got into the Sonic Advance games and I was particularly drawn to Sonic Advance 2.

It's strange because Sonic Advance 2 seems to be considered the most "hold right to win" game in the Sonic Advance series, but I find the stages in that game to be the most satisfying to perfect and play.

I also dig Advance 1 and 3, but I remember having the most frustration with 3.

Discovering the Advance series lead me back to the Classic series. Sonic 1, CD, 2, 3 and Knuckles.

Somewhere around here, I also remember the demo for Sonic Adventure DX.

After that I got to the Rush games (which I also found satisfying to complete despite, again, being called "hold right to win" games).

I just found doing as good runs as possible to be satisfying to pull off.

Then I got to Sonic Adventure and Sonic Adventure 2.

I think I spent hours replaying and perfecting the Sonic Adventure 2 speed levels in particular. I think those games were absolutely worth it for just the replay value of Sonic's/Shadow's stages. Any frustration with the other gameplay styles was worth all of the play time I got out of those stages and I think the only truly bad gameplay style was Big's fishing stages.

Even then, in Adventure 1 all the other campaigns were also pretty short.

In Adventure 2, I think the only source of true frustration for me were some of Knuckles/Rouge stages.

I think the reason why the other gameplay styles are so frowned upon is that they're not what you come to Sonic for, but I think only Big actually controls badly in terms of the fishing mechanics – the frustrations really come from level design.

After those two comes Heroes, which I think could've been my favourite out of these "adventure style" games, but the controls just were too stiff to not get in the way of enjoyment.

The long stages would've actually been awesome instead of frustrating if I didn't have to fight the controls (and occasionally camera) along the way.

It had some great level design with some really good level themes.

But it just wasn't as responsive as I would've liked it to be and movement over-adjusted really often, leading to deaths and a bunch of frustration not of my own making.

If any game deserves a remake with better controls, I think it is 100% Heroes.

But I still did get some fun out of it when everything worked as well as it could. I kind of love the Haunted House level and all of the interesting things it did.

This is the point where I no longer could play the games for a while.

Shadow the Hedgehog, Sonic 06 and Unleashed HD are the games I've never gotten to play in this gap. But the only bit I'm truly actually interested in are the day stages of Unleashed.

I feel like they have the Rush games effect that despite some of the cheap stuff in those stages, they are very satisfying to complete.

The next games I got to play were Unleashed and Colours Wii (though I never got to finish Unleashed Wii). I like Colours Wii more than Unleashed Wii.

Colours might be mostly 2D and more "generic" blocky stuff, but I still had fun blasting through it.

Unleashed Wii's day stages didn't really have that satisfaction of perfecting the stages like the Advance or Rush stuff. The Werehog was okay and I think sometimes actually better than the day stages, so the game as a whole was just okay.

But I think Colours DS is my favourite of the "Rush-style" games. The Wisps are really satisfying to use and the level design is more involved and less "cheap" than in the other Rush games, where sudden spikes and death pits are much more common.

Somewhere in here is Sonic Chronicles. I actually liked executing the moves with the characters for a little bit, but not much else about it. I think it's the only game in the series to this point I truly dislike.

There are more like okay games, good games and great games in this series for me because it looks like I've managed to avoid the biggest duds.

The final two games in the series I've actually played chronologically are the PC versions of Sonic Generations and Sonic Mania.

And I think both are really good!

Generations still wasn't 100% there with the controls, but I think it was the closest to Adventure series controls. Probably my favourite 3D Sonic game next to Sonic Adventure 2. I spent ages replaying all of the stages. I adore all of the open space and alternate routes there.

Sonic Mania is the best game post transition to 3D to me, though and would maybe even tie for my favourite Sonic game with Sonic CD if it was completely new.

It fixed some of the dated level design of the classic games – unfair spring and spike placement is at an all-time low, it evolved the usage of shields in a really cool way and added some really interesting level-specific mechanics, my favourite is probably the bouncy gel in Chemical Plant.

I 100% want a completely original Sonic Mania 2.

I have not played Sonic Generations 3DS, Lost World, any of the Boom games or Forces.

All of which are supposedly okay/terrible, too and honestly even don't have anything interesting going on to catch my eye in footage. Forces especially looks frustrating to me because it just looks like hallways and doesn't even look to have the satisfaction of perfecting a stage the other boost games have.

I really seem to be in a position where I've missed all of the worst stuff.

I actually probably find Secret Rings and 3D Blast to be the worst Sonic games because I remember being the most frustrated with them. Chronicles is still just mostly boring.

Black Knight has the really satisfying spin slash attack and you can keep the flow and control Sonic much, much better.

In-between all of this I've tried some of the 8-bit games which I liked just fine, but which all really blended together.

I've also tried the Sonic 4 parts, which I also find okay. Not good Genesis-style games, but okay, functional enough Rush-styled games.

So I can say that I don't think Sonic has ever "jumped the shark". There are good old games and good modern games.

From leaks, the upcoming game at least sounds much more ambitious than some of the previous games like Forces or Lost World.

I predict something like Unleashed where there is a sound foundation in there, but it is unrefined, as there seems to be talk that it's another really big switch-up – it possibly being an open world game.

I think I really appreciate the series' willingness to switch things up even if it doesn't always work out.

The Classic, Adventure, Advance, Rush/Boost games all are very different styles.

I've had a lot of fun over the years with this series and I hope I'll have more fun in the coming years.

I think the Adventure + Heroes remakes are 100% overdue. Also please, Sonic Mania 2 with all-original stages.

[sorasunao]

the GazettE ~ Uruha about World Tour’13 ~

translation from Garish Room #20

What were you thinking about during the Gazette World Tour'13?

Uruha: We haven’t been abroad for a long time, I have already managed to forget all past impressions, and there was no benefit from the old experience. "Oh? And it seems ok to me...?" (laughs). I just noticed that 6 years ago I went to Europe with only one guitar and one set of pedals. This time I had almost the same set of equipment, as in national tours. Compared with the last time we managed to play concerts in a great ambience, and my motivation has increased noticeably.

What a good effect. Before going on tour, you took part in two festivals: russian KUBANA FESTIVAL and japanese SUMMER SONIC.

Uruha: KUBANA FESTIVAL was very good. Since it is a fairly large open-air festival, there gathered about twenty thousand spectators. The beginning of our performance was after 23 pm, but in Russia the sun sets for a long time, so at about this time it went down. In a way, it was the best time to speak (laughs). In addition, the mood of the audience was "burning", and mojo didn't stop out for a minute. And at SUMMER SONIC my favorite Western performers often play, I always get a sincere pleasure. To all other things, this time we were satisfied with our performance, and the reaction of fans was good. Getting out of your comfort zone and accepting a challenge from outside is a precious chance. Thinking about such things, I think that I want to continue to perform at festivals.

We are looking forward to your performances with impatience. Let's talk about the world tour. The first part of your tour brought you first to Mexico, and then to South America.

Uruha: As for South America, I had a feeling, that we were baptized at the moment we arrived in Mexico. At the airport, a lot of people gathered, it was something awesome. When we first started talking about the tour in South America, we were in such moods: "I heard that musicians in Brazil are greeted very warmly, but are the foreigners really aware of the Gazette?", "Do they listen to us there?". But when we arrived and received such a stormy first reception, we didn’t know what to think: "How could we get such popularity here?". Perhaps, the reception was too passionate, even scared a little (laughs). I don't know is Mexico supportive of Japan, but the fans of the Gazette were filled with passion (laughs).

It seems that they are quite heard about you. However, travelers are often cautioned about Mexican water and food.

Uruha:  Yes, we were strongly advised not to drink tap water in the hotel. But I'm such a person who is annoyed to take precautions all to one. In the room, mineral water was left in advance, but I used tap water when brushing my teeth, for example. 

Come on! But this is somehow disgusting...

Uruha: Nothing like this. Similarly, I quietly took a shower in the hotel. I didn't feel the slightest indisposition, because on my day off I went to the ruins of the Teotihuacan pyramids. I think, Teotihuacan is an energetically powerful place. In these pyramids at once there is an alien quality of production (laughs).

Well, you say, quality ... (laughs). Concerts were just as awesome?

Uruha: It's not the word. Unable to feel the mood, the audience tried their best, and it looked so innocent. Everyone listened to their feelings and enjoyed it in their own way. In this sense, I felt the difference of cultures and mentality. I often recalled the situation in the Japanese hall, while I was abroad. But still, bringing the thought to the end, although all countries have fun in different ways, in each of them there is an incredible enthusiasm.

How interesting.  After Mexico, you went to Chile and Argentina, went deep into the continent.

Uruha: I knew in advance something about public safety in Chile. In fact, throughout the city walls of the houses are painted graffiti, and the smell of danger is directly in the air.  But despite this, we got a lot of pleasure from the concert.  The concert venue in Chile was built during the Japanese Taisho era; it looks like it was meant for boxing matches and it looked like a mini version of the Budokan. It looked majestic, the lighting and other details were quite old, but nevertheless the play platform was extremely convenient. So I can say that in Chile the mood of our tour was able to catch the right wave.

I think you have gained invaluable experience thanks to concerts and even weekends spent in these unexplored countries.

Uruha:  However, Argentina, following Chile, was even frightening. They say that there are blocks where even children carry weapons. In Argentina we had shooting, but the director who chose the location for the shooting said: "We will take photos on the outskirts of the city on the border with the slums." I was shooting on the bank of a river, and it seemed that it was only necessary to go over it, and you would immediately get into trouble. "Why here?" (laughs). We shot in a hurry, but at the height of the shooting the local coordinator said suddenly: "It won’t end well”,  and began to repeat: "Beware of the local". And at this time, while the coordinator was waving his hands: "Everything is good! Finish! ",  the operator continued to shoot (laughs). Now I can remember it with a laugh, but at that moment it was really scary.  

It's good that everything turned out okay. The last battle of the first half of the tour was Brazil, known for its hot temperament.

Uruha:  In Brazil it was very cool. And when we arrived at the airport, and when we arrived at the concert hall, there was such a crowd of fans that even the barriers were bent. It seemed to me that we really became stars (laughs). And since the ardor of the fans differed even from Chile and Argentina, it kind of got in the way (laughs). The concert turned out to be terrific. The Brazilians themselves are such, however, there was an impression that they did not know what to do when the concert began. But they were having fun... it seems (laughs).

It seems that they perceive rock music completely unsophisticated. It seems you really enjoyed the tour of South America.

Uruha:  Yes, very much. At first it didn't make a special impression, but it's worthwhile to stay there for a long time, and you become attached to it. By the way, Mexican food was disgusting. It's freaking spicy. Seeing some green paste, I decided that this is an avocado, but it was unrealistically burning (laughs). I would not say that I have moved to a new level of perception of spiciness, but it can't be conveyed in words (laughs). But you know, I want to try it again. Because such a spiciness will be well with beer. When the tour of Central and South America ended, I realized that time had flown by like an instant. I still desire to come there again.

Probably, the matter is that this place perfectly approaches to Uruha-san. Returning home from Brazil and not having time to rest, you went to the second part of the tour -  the European round of the battle began.

Uruha: On the day of the return and the day following it, we were free, but we flew to France very soon. It was hard. However, I was able to continue the journey due to the fact that I came home and relaxed a bit. In addition, the tour of Europe was different from the South American part, and I went there prepared. After arriving at the place, we took the bus, then went to the hotel, then to the concert stage, played a live... This repeating cycle looked like a normal Japanese tour and was pretty dull. Unlike in South America, where a shock shake from each event lined up in a whole chain, and memories of which were deeply imprinted in the memory, in Europe we quietly peacefully swept through the cities (laughs). Just Europeans are sufficiently courteous, so they did not gather in crowds, and there were almost no cases for fans to come to the hotel. And at the entrance to the club, I felt some kind of invigorating feeling. It's not that European fans strictly follow the rules, it's all a mentality. In the beginning, at the airport in France there were several welcoming people, but they all stood at a distance and waved to us. Something like Japan and very different from Central and South America (laughs).

Due to the fact that you immediately went from one part of the world to another, you even more felt the contrast. In the foreign tour, you have to move between cities. How did you spend your time on the trip?

Uruha: I listened to music, played games. In addition, we filmed every concert, and during the bus crossings I watched these videos. The bus was luxurious this time. It was just huge,  there were beds, both on the first and second floor there was a place on the likeness of the lobby, quite wide, with a sofa, table and TV. We connected a video camera to it and watched concert records together. It was a real house on wheels, very comfortable.

This, probably, is experienced only abroad. When you went to Europe 6 years ago, there was a fashion for Japanese anime and visual-kei. What is the situation there now?

Uruha:  Last time we had an event in the anime store. So closely they associated anime and visual-kei. But this time we didn’t notice anything like this. And there were no fans in the cosplay outfit.

In other words, this time it was the other way around, and it can be said that all the spectators who came were exclusively fans of the Gazette?

Uruha: Yes. The difference was visible clearly. Everywhere before the beginning of the concert, the voices were unanimously called the Gazette, and during the live people were having great fun. The so-called "cultural boom" calmed down a bit, but we felt the love to the GazettE by our skin. However, it didn’t seem that in Europe all the “forces” had flocked to the concerts, so we thought that we probably wouldn't gather more people. It must be cause we came for the second time. In Central and South America we were greeted very warmly,  but there are still a lot of incomprehensible things, and, probably, if we come again, then such a raving delight will not happen. In this sense, it is important every time we step on the rake.

What a deep thought. The Gazette World Tour'13 helped you to realize a lot.

Uruha: Right. Since the last time, we ourselves have grown up, and our view of things has changed. This time we treated each country not only as a place where we give a concert, but as a country itself. For example, when we traveled around Central and South America, we clearly felt the difference in cultures and customs and paid attention to public safety. When we arrived in Mexico, we found a crowd of demonstrators and saw, as in an instant, people with shields lined up in a row. Thus, in countries with such a different situation, the fans of the Gazette still came to our concerts. If to look at this from the side of price policy, the tickets were very expensive, and the fans had to work for several months to come to the concert. And they did it all the same ... Awareness of this prevailed in us. That's why, even if the fans behave like mad, we should accept this. I'm glad that we went on this tour already in the sense that I began to think about things that I haven't been able to notice before.

Returning from the tour, did you feel anything special about Japan?

Uruha: It is not surprising, after all, that the homeland evokes a sense of peace. Arriving at Narita Airport, I first went to the vending machines (laughs). Abroad there are almost no ones, so I felt calm just after looking at them (laughs).  I still have this impression that the spirit of the homeland is felt even in such familiar things.

translated from japanese to russian by haruurara-kazan on tumblr

translated from russian to english by me

as always thx for reading and sorry for mistakes ^^

[greenhills-montana]

Prologue to my Sonic IDW synopsis and thoughts.

So we have a lot of ground to cover, but I'll try to be brief.

Firstly, I'm coming in off the heels of only vaguely reading snippets of what happened during the Penders/Archie Era. Safe to say, that was the big reason I stayed as far away as I could from the comics. Penders being the most significant reason sega has stopped trying to world build with this IP coupled with the poor reception of Sonic 06. Not to mention the declining overall health of the comics industry and unpredictable release schedules, I haven't had much of a desire to read comics as of late. I think eons ago back when ipads were the king of gifts to give an elementary schooler in the mid-2000s, there was a sonic comic app? I vaguely remember it being somewhat nonfunctional and mostly had comics from the SATAM show. I'm not into this aspect of Sonic at all, especially with the vague and often confusing royalty plotlines or the fact that Mobius isn't earth and it's ruled by sonic's family or it's ruled by sally's family--? Or Eggman isn't just a hyper-capitalist theme park designer ala Walt Disney and he's a robot or the all extremely confusing robot politics of a cute animal world. Either way, it didn't "wow" me as a youngin other than the novelty of reading something that much older than me. I have a preference to the Japanese 90s sonic over the western "shark fin" version. That's just me. That being said, by the time I blow through the current run of IDW comics, I might go back and read the Archie stuff if I don't get my fix by then.

Secondly-- since the new IDW comics sort of take place in a nebulous place after the events of Sonic Forces, I feel like I should talk about my feelings about that game in particular. And I've beat it about twice on my Xbox one and haven't touched it since. I think it's the most ambitious the brand has been in quite awhile and therefore I'm willing to go easier on it. And from what I've read a lot of Mods have already gone about fixing the physics of the game, but I found that truthfully with enough patience I can get used to finicky controls. What I can't get used to is the camera and the very precise enemy placement/hit detection. Maybe it's just a me issue, my vision has always been poor, but I've had the hardest time trying to see the enemies in the drawn-back 2D portions of the game and would get sniped/knocked back by enemies that take me completely by surprise. The "classic" portion of the game was just me dying over and over again in increasingly pathetic ways because I couldn't see A GODDAMN THING!

Anyway, this is a tangent.

The story overall in Sonic Forces is again probably the first tentative steps into ambitious storytelling and world-building for the sonic world. Still, with some of the drawbacks with Boom and 06-- the tone is kind of all over the place. Inconsistency at this point is a brand staple; I'm so used to it I didn't even bat an eye at how the tone would completely whip around to the fact that Sonic was tortured and presumed dead even though he appears physically fine when we see him literally in the next scene. Sonic Forces feels like it harkens back to that Freedom Fighters-- SATAM era of sonic with the Army and War aesthetic except without all the parts that make me roll my eyes. And the tone feels very tongue-in-cheek how that show was in spite of the themes, which is a comparison I don't see too often when talking about the game. However, I don't think it's bad; it's different. It's a step in a direction that I haven't seen from the brand in a long time and want to see more, but it's unlikely I will-- so I just kind of have to think of the thought process that went into making the story and what they were going for versus the end product. I was glad to see the Chaotix, Silver, and Blaze make an appearance. And Shadow being the cause of the conflict, feels distinctly out of character for SA2 shadow but feels at home with this new self-aware comedy angle the games are skewing towards. But I find it 👀~interesting~👀 that Infinite thinks the best revenge on Shadow is to capture Sonic using Shadow's image and basically giving into that fear Mephiles tried to tap into in 06. The fact No one thinks of Shadow as a person with complex emotions but as a weapon. A weapon specifically the people he cares about will put down on a moments notice.

Though I guarantee you no one wants me to read into thaaaaaaaat!

In a medium like a comic you can spend more time on the details and emotional pieces the characters feel. So I think the comic being post-forces is such a rich bank to draw from in terms of character arcs to pull from. It just makes me wonder if Gadget or Infinite-- or the jackal squad would show up? I feel like this medium would be the best to explore those particular characters and dynamics the game introduced. I wonder if new gems like the Phantom Ruby will be at least explored in depth in the comic. Probably not but hey, that's what we have fan projects for-- right?

[blobsreviewsofgame]

Sonic Generations (Nintendo 3DS)

Sonic Generations 3DS is a platformer by Dimps released for the Nintendo 3DS in 2011. I don’t like it.

The story is a bit different compared to the console/PC version. Besides Tails, none of Sonic’s friends are in it.

Classic Sonic is running around in Green Hill Zone for some reason and comes across the purple halloween ghost called “Time Eater”. Skipping ahead in time, we see the preparation of the blue hedgehog’s birthday party. Sonic comes across it too early with Tails being the only one at the place. Then the time eater appears and they both get sucked into the white void (that is now just a level select menu).

Eventually they come across their classic counterparts, team up and find out why this all happens. The writing is a bit better compared to the console counterparts but it still isn’t the greatest Sonic has to offer in terms of story. Like Tails and Classic Tails actually doing something besides talking in the story.

But the cutscenes are like Sonic Rush Adventure and Colors DS’ cutscenes, sadly. There’s a dialog box with text, characters do grunts, poses and mimics and sometimes they slide across the screen. It’s not like fully animated cutscenes with voice acting is an impossible task on 3DS (Sonic Boom: Fire & Ice does this) but it’s probably more so because the game just got rushed.

Gameplay isn’t too hot here either.                                                          

Classic Sonic plays through the levels in 2D. He can run, jump and spindash, like always. The rolling here actually works more like how rolling works in the old games than Generations does on consoles but the levels never really use rolling in some clever way. It also has the Game Gear Sonic 1 rolling glitch. Just jump and roll constantly and you’ll gain speed instantly. The first 3 levels for him are basically just 1:1 the layout of the original game and the levels afterwards are either straight lines, waiting to jump on slowly moving platforms or homing attacking à la Sonic 4.

Yes, Classic Sonic has the homing attack. More specifically after he watches Modern Sonic do it a bunch of times, he learns the ability (aka: after the 1:1 layouts of the original games from the Classic era). He also watches him do the boost later on but Classic Sonic doesn’t actually learn that, making the cutscene pretty useless. Odd.

Now, Modern Sonic plays through the levels in… 2D. Oof, but hey, because this is Dimps here, the levels are going to be like Sonic Rush where you do tricks and stuff, right? No.

Modern Sonic is mostly just about walking on even ground boosting through a lot of enemies, waiting to jump on slowly moving platforms or homing attacking à la Sonic 4. No tricks to fill up the boost meter, no satisfying chiptune crunches for soundeffects, just boring. There is an attempt at making setpieces but those are often not connected to the main gameplay (platforming, memorizing and looking cool) and instead are something like a minigame (press A at a specific time, hold down the boost button, etc.). 

Boosting is even slower than it was in the previous handheld games. It almost feels like a run button with invincibility, it’s that slow feeling.

Speaking of Classic Sonic learning the homing attack only later, Modern Sonic only learns the stomp later too by Tails giving him “30% lighter shoes”. …Even though he was already able to stomp in both versions of Sonic Colors.

There aren’t 3 zones per era anymore too. We have Green Hill, Casino Night and Mushroom Hill for the Classic era; Emerald Coast and Radical Highway for the Dreamcast era and Water Palace and Tropical Resort (from Colors DS because Classic Sonic gets a 1:1 layout again and maybe Modern Sonic tries to be like Colors Wii but it’s not 1:1 there) for the Modern era.

Why not include Heroes or something from the Advance games for the Dreamcast era and something from Sonic Rush Adventure for the Modern era (because Rush’s Water Palace is included for some reason)? 

Bosses are also here, just like in the console games.

The 3 character bosses are always racing levels where the enemy is hindering you with their attacks if you’re close around them. The levels for them also reuse assets from a level you already played through but with a different layout and background music.

The actual bosses are rather okay but a bit soulless feeling.

The final boss from Sonic 3 is a bit too slow and you can’t always counter his attacks which is a missed opportunity and the way he gets defeated is lame. It starts nicely with the Sonic Rush-like build-up (camera zooms in 3-times while being frame freezed) but then he’s doing a falling animation, getting stuck in the air and fading to white.

Biolizard is dragging the attacks a bit out too much and it can feel like forever before showing its weakspot. And it doesn’t do the Sonic Rush build-up at the end… aw.

Egg Emperor (isn’t that from the Dreamcast era again?) is okay but Eggman’s voiceclips get repeated way too often and the spinball looks strange while swapping planes because it’s often tilted for no reason.

But it does have the Sonic Rush build-up! Except it doesn’t do freeze-frames this time and he just freezes there while explosion.gif animation files are pasted on top of the boss model a lot.

But at least the time eater fight is actually better than the one in the console version.

Story mode doesn’t require to play 9 missions in the 3DS version btw but we do have to play 7 special stages. And no, Super Sonic won’t be playable in normal levels.

Special stages in Generations 3DS are basically remakes of the ones from Sonic Heroes. You control a running Modern Sonic in a giant tube where you go left or right to collect colorful spheres. Collecting them gives you boost energy. Sometimes, you also need to jump over spike bombs by jumping through dash rings.

The goal of the special stage is to catch up with the emerald, like Heroes. Unlike Heroes though, it’s super easy and the controls work. Hooray?

If you thought missions are just absent in this version, well, no, not entirely. There’s a separate mission mode here with 100 missions. You unlock them randomly by playing the online mode or you can spend 5 playcoins to unlock 1 mission. If you don’t want to play online, that’s 50.000 steps to be able to play all 100 missions.

Missions are now always under a more stricter time limit and require you to e.g. collect a bunch of rings, defeat a bunch of enemies, earn more time by destroying monitors and getting to the goal or not getting hit once. Sometimes it has new layouts, most of the time, it doesn’t. It takes about 2 hours to play through all 100 of them, a bit more than how long story mode takes. 

Playing through a mission also unlocks something like illustrations and pictures, high-poly 3D models or music from past games (which you can only listen to; also in standby mode with headphones).

There’s also something I wish the actual Generations would’ve had: Online VS mode.

You can play this game with other people online and you can choose to play either the 16 main levels or race to the emerald in the 7 special stages… in about 10 to 15 frames per second. It’s not very pretty. The races also work via local play (wireless 2 players with both having cardridges) but surprisingly, I haven’t found anyone yet who also has Generations 3DS. Oh, and it shares a profile card with each other which shows what ranks you got in each level, a screenshot from a game of your choice, your favorite Sonic the Hedgehog game (even the ones you don’t expect are there), your score (which depends on winning and losing in online battles and the amount of times you played a stage) and how long you’ve been a Sonic fan.

There’s also a time trial mode here which lets you upload your record online, like Colors DS. You can also share time trial ghosts and profile cards through streetpass but good luck finding someone via streetpass that also has streetpass data for Sonic Generations 3DS.

Sometimes it also rewards you if you’re doing something online by giving you a random item for your next playthroughs of a level, like 10 rings or an electric shield.  Fun fact: You can only get an electric shield for Modern Sonic that way.  Anyways…

The music in Generations 3DS is basically the best part of it but unlike Generations on consoles, you can’t swap the music out with something else. I think Dimps could’ve at least added an option to play music from your SD Card while playing levels because I don’t want to hear Radical Highway’s awful remix ever again.

My 3DS Activity Log says I’ve put in 171 hours into Sonic Generations 3DS but would I recommend it? No, absolutely not. While it does have a ton of useless unlockable content, playing it is a chore or just a borefest. It’s clearly a cashgrab and not much else. Don’t bother with it, okay? It’s just draining.

There, @squadalaguy! I finally reviewed it! :P

[crystalnet]

Sonic Forces is Good

Sonic doesn't really slot into any of the semi-nebulous interests that this blog has previously covered but I just had to make an exception because I have thoughts on the blue blur's new game, especially in light of everyone going crazy for Mario Odyssey and the fact almost all professional reviewers as well as various critics on youtube have been basically taking a wrecking-ball to this game. Sonic fans themselves are left mostly enjoying the game (if the subreddit is any indication) and kind of sheepishly acknowledging the pretty low metacritic scores with a bit of a shrug--a pose any true Sonic fan has gotten used to taking in the past decade. I want to talk just very briefly about the problem with Sonic in 2017 and anytime past the year 1998 really and why perception of his non-side-scrolling games seem critically flawed and misguided...

First of all, 3D Sonic has basically always been a mess. Now I should mention before getting deep into this, Forces is my first Sonic game since Sonic Heroes and Sonic Advance 2, the former of which wasn't even as fun as the flawed SA2 and the latter of which should be considered Sonic 5 (or 6 if you count Sonic CD) for all I care, in that it is an excellent expansion of OG Sonic style (shit like grinding on rails, updated Sprites and even Amy as a playable character were great additions). Those two games though are indicative of the whole series: the 3D ones are always problematic while the 2D ones don't seem particularly hard to make well. 

I think there is a big range of how fans and critics view the series, but it seems as if the 3D games are either held to the standard of Adventure 1 and 2, which were always pretty flawed games, or else held to some non-existent and unattainable standard. But we should be clear: Sonic never had his Super Mario 64. Adventure 1 comes close, and that game does a lot very well, but it introduces a lot of things which would plague the 3D games forever. I'm mostly talking about the fact A1 and A2 are want to have all these additional playable characters besides Sonic and yet, Sonic (or Shadow) levels are always clearly where the best level design and most fun is to be had. 

Why force characters like Big the Cat or E-102 Gamma down our throat, when almost all the Sonic levels are amazing compared to levels where you shoot at things or hunt for emeralds. Like extra characters are kind of intrinsically fun when your a kid, but it always felt a bit like padding to me to play the Tails/Eggman and Knuckles/Rogue levels in SA2. So the gold standard for the 3D games becomes about 1/3rd of the content in the first two games?

What I'm trying to say is that Sonic Team never knew exactly what they were trying to achieve with these games it seems. It's like they continued the tradition of Sonic 2 and 3 with Tails and then Knuckles being added by eventually just adding a shit ton of characters to every game, effectively diluting the experience. I'm not even a big fan of Mario 64, but clearly that game is critically lauded, whereas the Blue Blur just couldn't seem to make that same transition. Heroes is literally all about adding characters, along with bright, colorful presentation which barely masked the weakened level-design. Then beyond the critical face-plant that is Sonic ‘06, Sonic Team's goals with these games seem even more unclear than ever and the warm embrace of 90s Sonic seems further away then ever before during the past decade or so.

You have a couple of weird "story book"-style spin offs on the Wii like the Black Knight and Secret Rings which really push the boundaries of what a Sonic game can be (seemingly to mostly bad reviews), Sonic Unleashed, which is literally split between somewhat traditional 3D gameplay and the kind of totally different style of gameplay a la non-Sonic levels in the Adventure titles (werehog Sonic...) and then a few games that seem to be headed in a more stable direction: Sonic, Sonic Colors, Sonic Generations and to a slightly lesser degree, Sonic Lost World . 

Like I said,  I haven't played any of these since Heroes, but I've been reading up and looking at all of Somecallmejohnny's videos on youtube to get a sense of how people feel about these, and these last 3 seem to be on the up-and-up in terms of critical reaction from both critics and fans. But Generations was in 2011 and since then it's been mostly an onslaught of Sonic Boom games and I'll do us all a favor and gloss over those completely. While Lost World tweaks things a bit with a run-button, Colors and Generations built on the more traditional half of Unleashed and heavily featured the boost mechanic which lends itself to a new kind of level design which is considerably different than that of Adventure 1 and 2.

I guess the long-winded point that I'm trying to make is that Sonic Team has basically been having an identity crisis since 1998. Not a single one of these stands as a true precedent for the series in that the best of their lot--Generations-- is still one of those meta, self-aware entries since it combines modern and classic sonic, quite literally. I do really wanna play those last 3 I mentioned because they seem like they are on the right path, but I'm sure for every fan, there is still a disappointed nay-sayer. 

This leads me to my final point though, and that is that Forces, for me personally, is a pretty damn good idea of what 3D Sonic is. I think people were putting a lot of pressure on it since it's been a while since a true 3D entry that wasn't a Boom spin-off, but also because of Manias success. Mania from earlier this year was really great, but it's great in a mostly regressive way.  Yes, the four new levels are fantastic and Christian Whitehead did a awesome job of capturing the "magic" of the first 3 games while refining things like the controls and amount of sprite-frames and adding some cool extras as well as those dope Chaos emerald bonus zones, but the success it had is based off of design-principles from nearly 25 years ago. 

I can't complain at all, because it's a really fun game and a great way to revisit classic vibes and levels, but I hope it's the beginning of a sea-change for Sonic Team's approach and not just a blip. Mania 2 for instance could revisit/remix the underrated Advance trilogy, or Sega could grow some balls and let Whitehead and other fan-developers like him step up to the plate and either design a full fresh side-scrolling entry OR something like oh I don't know Sonic Adventure 3?

Either way, the game generated a lot of hype which Sega capitalized on by dropping Forces a few months later. And me and like half of hard-core fans are pretty happy with the game and that's about it. Same old story since SA2: new 3D game comes out, gets mediocre reviews, half the fans are on-board while the other seem even more disappointed than professional critics. Everyone seems to have a clear idea of what Sega should be doing with their 3D games, but no one can really agree. 

Well I for one think Forces is on the right track. It's not perfect, but it's not really trying to be the next big game (they make that clear every single time they release a 3D title that isn't SA3). It's only 40 USD which I think denotes that it's to played in-tandem with Mania, so you got your classic Sonic on one hand, and your new-fangled and always-problematic-to-somebody 3D Sonic on the other. Also it's worth noting that I play this on the Switch. I think the Switch magically makes any game better for being played on it, and yeah I can't really imagine playing this on PS4. The option of portability makes any game better IMO, and Switch just adds this x-factor to any game right now, I can't totally explain it (will write another post all about it).

The game hold ups though, and beyond the novel trifling that is the character-designer/OC, the level-design is better in my opinion than most are letting on. I'm not sure yet if anything comes close to my personal gold-standard for 3D Sonic levels (Radical Highway and City Escape) but the sense of speed is often phenomenal, but I don't think there is any more of those moments where you are forfeiting control than there has always been since even the Genesis games, which is something I've seen some critics complain about. I admit I was slightly taken back by the locked camera, and often-times narrow corridor-esque levels, but once I got the hang of it, I realized that this is a more faithful translation of classic Sonic into 3D than the more free-roaming styled levels of Adventure games. 

People seem to get mad when there's too much precise platforming in Sonic (Marble Ruins..) just as some assail it for feeling like an auto-scroller at other times. It's like fans approach the series with the same confused priorities that Sonic Team themselves have sometimes displayed. I like the generally arcade-y feel of the levels though and re-visiting them for the purposes of refining my runs/time is enticing in the way it was back in the Sonic/Shadow levels in SA2.

Sonic is a weird, platypus of a genre unto himself: Neither pure platforming, racing or trick-based sports game a la Tony Hawk/SSX, he is all of these things and none of them at the same time. And I think these levels capture that excellently. What he isn't are slow and awkward Emerald-hunting levels or shoot-em-ups, but Sonic Teams seems to always shoot for more diversity in game-play than just Sonic levels would allow for, and that's where the Avatar levels come in, retaining the style and speed of the Sonic levels, while also expanding it slightly with Ratchet and Clank-style gun-play that seems to stand-in for awkward shit like the Eggman/Tails levels in SA2. And yeah this does mix it up nicely. 

Something else I've been seeing is that it's too easy and the levels are too short, and I just hope people are playing this on Hard mode (the requisite for hard mode is simply if you have played Sonic before according to the game itself). Other criticisms I've seen simply don't resonate, like people complaining about the controls of the Sonic levels, which just did not stand-out to me as being something I noticed. I like the variety of 2D and 3D, and think it strikes a good balance. 

So yeah, I basically just wanted to write this big ass post to explain why I think it's good and why other people should STFU, basically. Sonic isn't Mario, and never had been. His games are not explicitly all-ages, timeless crowd-pleasers. His games have always been faux-edgy, psuedo-platforming/racing hybrids that click hard with some and leave others cold. They are also explicitly for kids in a way that Mario games aren't, and it's a kind of complicated point but I think professional critics should take into account this shit was never designed for a 30 year-old to enjoy. That's literally why Mania exists. A 10 year old now-a-days might enjoy Mania, but a lot of that game nearly amounts to being a joke that someone born after 1999 couldn't really get. 

So, basically I'm all for trying new things, perfecting a formula that never quite existed and honing in on the good parts of some of the first Sonic games, and I think that's what Forces does. Also the story is sick. Some Sonic fans actually get caught up on the story which is insane to me because its like following the plot of a Tom and Jerry cartoon, but this shit hit some fan-service high-points for me (great cast of characters that mostly glazes newer shit and honors OG Adventure 1 and 2 shit, a slightly "darker" tone, Classic Sonic seeming chill af compared to real Sonic, and cameos from old-school bad guys, for instance). So that shouldn't be a factor in your review if your over the age of 9, is what I'm saying, but I actually dig it despite that. 

Yes, it could be improved upon, but I think it’s an excellent starting point for the developers to build on, so hey why not add Whitehead to this team, as well as few of the level-designers from the other Boost games (Colors, Generations, Lost World), refine the controls and level design a bit and BAM, you got yourself a worthy candidate for the true, long-awaited Sonic Adventure 3 that all true fans have been waiting for forever (even though the Adventure games weren't perfect to begin with so this is a wish that contradicts my other points but still). What I think I'm saying, is if this is what they can do in a $40 title with a relatively small dev-team from what I've read, then what can they do when they go all in? Or are they too scared? Well these reviews might scare them off from even trying again and that's what I'm worried about, but Sega needs to grow some balls, and go all-in for the next release and lay-off the Pachinko-onslaught, or at least funnel some of that Pachinko-gold into developing the next game. Like I said, Sonic isn't Mario, and he doesn't need to be, or need to have games like the big cross-generational 3D Mario games that come out every 5-8 years or so. But you know he could if he wanted to, and I think Forces shows a pretty good way forward. Until then, try opening your heart to the Blue Blur if it's been a while-- who knows, you might just be surprised. Smell ya later, dreamerz~

[branblessed-blog]

anyway i clearly have too much time on my hands. this shit’s from my favorite grumpout of all time.

DAVE: welcome back to another exciting round of DAVE: "my god, they made a video game" DAVE: with my co-host john JOHN: it's cold in here DAVE: it is chilly DAVE: um this is from sonic boom part thirty one DAVE: uh people have noticed this because its actually quite visible in the game DAVE: ill just go ahead and play it DAVE: so DAVE: theres a few things that happen in rapid succession as is often the case in this game DAVE: knuckles is running along DAVE: amy blips in and out of existence as is her wont DAVE: uh you might not have noticed that they actually teleport in in t-poses up there JOHN: oh my god... DAVE: they just kind of blip into existence there just like were ready JOHN: so that's future knuckles? DAVE: thats future knuckles getting ready DAVE: waiting in the wings so to speak DAVE: a bunch of crazy camera stuff DAVE: and then theres uh DAVE: two sonics JOHN: that's my favorite! DIRK: Yeah, that's... DAVE: and uh he sorta like falls into place there JOHN: that is JOHN: oh yeah DAVE: he's like wait for me guys! JOHN: you like kinda blow through him DAVE: yeah its like PCHOO DAVE: doppelganger get outta here JOHN: aw man DAVE: so JOHN: for like one magical second the time streams cross DAVE: right |DAVE: so uh JOHN: oh that's so inexcusable DAVE: yeah thats bad DAVE: that's bad show you know DAVE: its like when youre going to see shrek at the christmas house and you can also see a video of shrek while you see the real shrek its bad show JADE: shrek the halls :) DAVE: shrek the halls? JADE: yeah shrek the halls DAVE: alright anyway DAVE: uh so thats really bad and then also DAVE: so they go flying DAVE: actually i wonder are they running on nothing when they DAVE: yeah DAVE: so theyre still running but theyre like OH NO WHERED THE GROUND GO DAVE: and they go flying up in the sky DAVE: and theres this beautiful animation of them flipping around DIRK: Yeah, it's very nice. DAVE: uh its alright DAVE: and then later DIRK: Oh, also, Knuckles' shoes are going through the ground. DAVE: oh yeah amys just sort of sloshing through the ground there DAVE: uh DAVE: yeah everything looks bad in this game DAVE: uh DAVE: that is JOHN: that's awesome DAVE: yeah DAVE: oh this was fun DAVE: i mean this happened before but like they have this particle effect of this beam and then they teleport him ahead DAVE: so then this beam is still there DAVE: and its just like ahh just ignore that its not supposed to be there DAVE: so then up ahead you beat him up again and then the same exact thing happens DAVE: and i was like that looks familiar! i wonder that actually is the exact same animation frame for frame DAVE: so i layered the earlier animation on top DAVE: and you can see that the camera angle is slightly different but its frame for frame the exact same thing DIRK: Wow. JOHN: oh man DAVE: which like DAVE: whatever DAVE: like i get why they do that thats not like a big problem DAVE: im not gonna fault them for that i just found it funny DAVE: um lets see DAVE: oh up here was another fun thing so yeah DAVE: heres uh metal sonic died spoilers or whatever DIRK: The good ole one frame zip pan. DAVE: yeah so he disappears DAVE: whatever DAVE: amys there for a single frame and then WHOOP DAVE: they like slid up i dunno i dont even know DAVE: shes not even the tallest character so i dont know why she's the only one there it just blows my mind DAVE: there they are with that crystal having a good time DAVE: one last thing i want to point out was between episodes DAVE: i actually used some of this audio for like an end slate thing which DAVE: just watch this JOHN: yeah DAVE: even you were like what the fuck JOHN: yeah DAVE: that's some tyler durden shit DAVE: so if we go frame by frame you know DAVE: boop boop boop JOHN: oh! DAVE: see that DAVE: thats amy falling in an existential nightmare for one frame DIRK: What the fuck? JOHN: aw yeah DAVE: just blipping like AHH DAVE: and then shes gone JOHN: yeah DAVE: its so fucking bizarre JOHN: if you go back JOHN: i can see it now but like if you go back JOHN: nonono like to where her frame is JOHN: like i thought i was look at like a pink fish monster with lips coming at the camera DAVE: ooooh DAVE: are those like the eyes or something JOHN: yeah yeah that's why i was like oh god what? DAVE: gross JOHN: yeah DAVE: amys apparently a fish monster JOHN: and let it go forward a couple frames JOHN: yeah what is that? JOHN: whose shadow is that? DIRK: That's her falling! JOHN: oh! DIRK: Yeah, that's her falling! Look at that! DAVE: and then when does she appear DAVE: oh there she is JOHN: wow DAVE: like hey guys you miss me JOHN: guys JOHN: you know what i love? JOHN: the last time we saw anything like that happen was 1987's chester cheetah too cool to fool DAVE: i just love how she looks like shes in some kind of nightmare existence JOHN: oh yeah DAVE: in some alternate dimension and shes just like DAVE: just briefly is able to visit our world DIRK: Beautiful. DAVE: yeah DAVE: so that's sonic boom JOHN: let's keep playing! DAVE: leave your thoughts in the comments above JOHN: below. DAVE: below